After my book “The London Silence” was published, I grew to hate the text. About 120 were sold but I decided it had to die. I wanted to change the ending to resolve the dramatic irony more satisfactorily. I told PG to remove it from sale. So it’s out-of-print even p.o.d.
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| The London Silence, cover flat |
I dumped my stash of copies in a recycling bin, so it became pulp fiction. However, secondhand copies could still be bought on Amazon. Just recently, I thought, “I’ll buy all of those and bin them too” but it’s not possible as some are priced at outrageous levels. However, a strange thing happened next.
For the first time in nearly 15 years, I started re-reading the text and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Maybe my standards have slipped but I don’t think it’s that. It’s because here were things that without this text were completely lost to my mind. It’s a museum of me.
I now have a collection of used books, some of which I signed and numbered in 2004. They found their way to charity shops and thence to World of Books and that’s fine. One of them is actually pristine, from a bookshop I imagine, as a few did go to real bookshops in the US & UK.
I’m still not happy with the ending, general restrained flow or anyway a lack of plenitude, underwriting, typo “alter” for “altar”. But then I’ve noticed numerous typos in famous bestselling books since then and love it when I spot them so, again, – relief.
I used to complain to my friend at the publisher (Pretend Genius) that the book should never have been published, but now I think I should say an overdue thank you to them and that, after all, it wasn’t so bad. I’m even thinking about a new edition, or rehabilitating parts of it, only I’d like to finish other things I’ve started since then first.
Stephen Moran's Museum of Illusions 