Home › Multilingual Archive Index › Uncorrected proof

Uncorrected proof

Uncorrected Proof is the title novelist Louisiana Alba uses for his 2008 released novel, exploring themes of plagiarism and influence. The story is set in the publishing industry and following the conflicts and writing life of a writer whose novel is stolen by a celebrity author.

The uncorrected proof is the penultimate version of a literary work or book before final publication ^{[1] [2]}. An uncorrected proof is sometimes called a galley proof or an advance reading copy (ARC), and is used for book reviews, sent out by publishers to dedicated journals, newspaper and magazines. Many reviewers prefer, even insist on, seeing the uncorrected proof, not the final printed book.

Alba cites James Joyce’s parodic and myth-based technique in Ulysses by following Homer’s Iliad. But rather than follow the narrative poem itself as Joyce did with Homer’s Odyssey, Alba traces the prequel conditions in Greece before Helen’s flight with Paris to Troy parodying over one hundred modernist and postmodernist writers. Alba's stated aim is to enface a portrait of the artist as a postmodern, reversing Joyce’s attempt at self-effacement from the text of Ulysses.

The wider relevance Alba intended in his use of uncorrected proof in the title of his novel is rooted in his belief that a literary work is not 'bound in' by a cover. In Alba’s view a novel never begins or ends with an individual work, the boundaries of influence and interdependence always crossed, with sources shared consciously and subconsciously between literary works and writers’ imaginations ^[3].

References

1. ^ MyFirstEditions.com
2. ^ Independent Online Booksellers Association
3. ^ ElephantBlog at ElephantEarsPress.com