Post­ed by Nat Bern­stein

You know how some shows take a few episodes to find their legs? I ini­tial­ly gave up on Parks and Recre­ation, for exam­ple, dis­ap­point­ed in the ear­ly run of a pro­gram I had great­ly antic­i­pat­ed, and returned a cou­ple sea­sons lat­er to what by then quick­ly became one of my favorite com­e­dy sit­coms of all time. After see­ing the show through its finale I went back to the begin­ning of the series and dis­cov­ered the bril­liance of the ear­ly episodes I had shunned: though the humor had evad­ed audi­ences at the start of Parks & Rec, the writ­ers were sub­tly devel­op­ing the comedic arter­ies of the show, lay­ing the foun­da­tion for the rest of the sit­com’s sev­en-sea­son run. Rewatch­ing Sea­son 1 with the full antic­i­pa­tion of what would fol­low made appre­ci­ate it on a whole new level.

The same can be true when it comes to books: an author’s debut flop trans­forms to trea­sure on the mer­it of their lat­er works, prized for the ear­ly strains of the writer’s more pop­u­lar books and pro­gres­sion it showcases.

Just such a phe­nom­e­non is promised with the re-release of Lev Gross­man­’s first book, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the late ​’90s. Tor Books revealed the cov­er for the Sep­tem­ber 2016 edi­tion from St. Mar­t­in’s Grif­fin ear­li­er this week, attest­ing that ​“this re-pub­li­ca­tion of Grossman’s debut nov­el shows the roots of his Magi­cians hero Quentin Coldwater.”

The author, for his own part, was a lit­tle more self-effac­ing: ​“St. Mar­t­in’s pub­lished my first nov­el WARP in 1998,” he announced this week on Face­book. ​“Unsat­is­fied with the amount of mon­ey they lost on it last time, they’re repub­lish­ing it (with an intro­duc­tion by me) in Sep­tem­ber. Here’s the new cover.”

Relat­ed Content:

• Ilana C. Myer: How Jerusalem Infil­trat­ed My Fan­ta­sy Novel
• Helen Weck­er: The Most Jew­ish Thing I Do
• Daniel Oppen­heimer: An Author’s First Book Is Always Their Sec­ond Attempt