What a Piece of Work I Am

Mark Dorset

In 2001, Kraft’s publishers allowed What a Piece of Work I Am to go out of print. This development disappointed, disturbed, and depressed him, of course, but it did more than that: it also frightened him. The word is not too strong, I think. He was afraid that the integrity of the Personal History was threatened. The overall work had been mutilated by the amputation of one of its parts, and he feared that it would not be recognized as a single work composed of many parts, if all of its components were not available.

Kraft promised himself that he would find a way to get the book back into print . . . someday. As a step toward that end, he requested a reversion of all rights in the work. He received it in January of 2002.
Because there was always something else to do (the next book to write, the next piece of hackwork to find and finish), Kraft did not pursue the objective of bringing What a Piece of Work I Am, which he usually refers to as WaPoWIA, back into print.

Years passed. During those years, Kraft completed several new books, including Inflating a Dog, Passionate Spectator, and On the Wing, all published by St. Martin’s Press and Picador USA, but more books were allowed to go out of print, including Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, At Home with the Glynns, Leaving Small’s Hotel, and Where Do You Stop? Still, because there was always something else to be done, always something else that had to be done, he never managed to find the time or energy to try to get WaPoWIA back into print or even to request a reversion of rights to the other books that had gone out of print.

In 2008, something snapped. With the help of legal counsel at the Authors Guild, Kraft began the process of obtaining reversion of rights in the books that had gone out of print (see note below), and, since he already had a reversion of rights to WaPoWIA, he decided to bring it back into print on his own, through the Babbington Press.

Immediately he began thinking about new covers for the books, and also about a subtle change in the structure of the presentation of the text, the framing of it. In part, his motivation was a simple desire to make the re-issued books his own, to “take them back,” and in part it was to end the misinterpretation of them as “children’s books,” a curse that had begun with the original Apple-Wood Books editions of the novellas.

The re-design process began with a cover for WaPoWIA, then extended to new covers for all the books in the Personal History, and eventually included the creation of a book within a book for each title, with Kraft’s work framing and enveloping Peter Leroy’s memoirs, which acquired internal title pages of their own. The development of the new covers is so significant to the process of reissuing the work that I have outlined their evolution in “The New Covers: The Design and Development of Them.”

Because What a Piece of Work I Am would serve as a template for the Babbington Press versions of all the other previously-issued books, it went through several revisions of internal design and layout, culminating in a hardcover edition very similar to the original Crown Publishers hardcover edition and a paperback edition in a compact size suitable for pocket or purse.

The Babbington Press published What a Piece of Work I Am on July 23, 2008.

Note: Reversion of Rights
On June 30, 2008, Kraft received three reversion letters from Crown Publishers. Two were copies of reversion letters for Herb ’n’ Lorna and Reservations Recommended, which originally had been sent in 2004, but to Kraft’s former agents, who had never forwarded them to him. The third letter granted reversion of rights to Little Follies, At Home with the Glynns, and Where Do You Stop?

Ariane Illuminates Herself (back view)
While walking cross-town in Manhattan, on their way to a performance of a revival of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, the Krafts were “stopped in their tracks” by the sight of this lamp in the window of a small hotel. Kraft immediately recognized its potential as an illustration of Ariane’s proclamation of her success in creating a worthy and independent self. He took this picture at once and then dashed into the hotel to take another from the front. (See below.)

Risking the Ridiculous