The book's first edition sold only a hundred copies before being remaindered, suggesting that the poet and critic Mark Van Doren had it right when he wrote in "The Nation" in 1923 that Stevens' wit "is tentative, perverse, and superfine; and it will never be popular." Yet by 1960 the cottage industry of Stevens studies was becoming a "multinational conglomerate", more than fulfilling Van Doren's prophecy that some day a monograph would be written that would pay tribute to Stevens' "delicately enunciated melody, his economy, his clipped cleanliness of line, his gentle excellence."