The Booksellers' Spectator/Paste Tests

...the three authors fidgeted a little and protested that there was nothing at all unpleasant about this wonderful experience (How about realizing that the person who is interviewing youhas not read a word of your book...

...THE BOOKSELLERS' SPECTATOR TASTE TESTS by Cathy Young All was not PC at the American ..Booksellers' Association annual convention, held from May 31 to June 4 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York...

...P. J. confirmed as much when he was asked whether he believed any subjects were off-limits to humor, and conceded that one should not make fun of woes that befall people through no fault of theirs, such as blindness...

...n an earlier day, sitting at the kj same table in the press conference room was none other than P. J. O'Rourke, whose government-bashing Parliament of Whores has just bumped Bob Woodward's The Commanders from the number-one spot on the Washington Past bestseller list...

...The promotional leaflet advertised a "National Search for the Cathy Young is our Soviet Presswatch columnist...

...There was an occasional waft of tobacco smoke...

...Maybe someone will sign a deal to turn this article into a book," a friend of mine said...

...Authors who have made it past the hurdles were out there in the fray, too, attending those overcrowded parties, working the booksellers and promoters, and facing the media at press conferences...

...On the other side of the fence, a small New York publisher called S.P.I...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1991 41...

...But it seems the author of Republican Party Reptile has mellowed...

...and, although I didn't see a single fur coat, it was June...

...There is hope for the world after all...

...a young man in the back of the room inquired with plaintive belligerence...

...Warm, Caring Guy" contest to fmd the most outstanding example of a lovelorn male mistreated and rejected by the other sex...

...Also out in force were peddlers of Save-the-Earth literature, whose capture of children's publishing in particular seems to have succeeded remarkably well...

...Zukerman was making a noble effort to preserve a slice of our endangered heritage...

...When Phil Zukerman of Applewood Books invited me to drop by their exhibit for a "taste test," I fully expected to be handed a slice of apple pie, only to fmd out that Mr...

...Alyson Books offered a new line of children's literature ("Jefferson Bartleby Jones considers himself lucky to have two ds," begins a typical catalogue entry, and it is not about the son of a bigamous mother), as well as a gay sex manual, which included not only "Leather," "Lubricants," and "Romance," but also "Water Sports" (you're better off if you stay dry...

...Knopf was shamelessly advertising its revival of the "Everyman" series of classics, an idea that, as we know, privileges certain texts by implying that they are more important than others...

...The grand prize was a trip for two at Club Med, though what use would that be to a guy who keeps getting rejected...

...When was the last time you heard a liberal defend himself against charges of excessive sensitivity...

...this way, kids without the luck of having two mommies or two daddies can still enjoy the benefits of PC...

...They didn't even bother to rename it Everyperson...

...While I am among those reactionaries who would like to preserve distinctions between Shakespeare and a restaurant guide, I have no intention of frowning on the festive display of exhibitors' wares, even if only remotely related tothe publishing of books (a company called Zebra Books, whose specialty escapes me, had even put up a life-size parade float with a huddle of life-size toy zebras...

...The "taste test" involved comparisons between passages from the originals and passages from the dumbed-down versions, with the vote apparently running heavily in favor of the real thing...

...And that," he added, jabbing at the audience, "is the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals: conservatives will say you shouldn't make Helen Keller jokes, but liberals will say you can't...

...Still, beneath all the literal and figurative tinsel, there was some pessimism, or at least some concern...

...One of the highlights of the gigantic trade show was a structure representing a downsized Sistine Chapel—courtesy of a Japanese company, Nippon Video...

...A visitor with the old-fashioned ..habit of approaching literary classics with quasi-religious reverence might have been chagrined by the absence of any hierarchy of values: high culture, pop culture, and God knows what else thrown pell-mell into a huge melting pot...

...At a joint appearance, mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark, rising black novelist Charles Johnson, and man of letters Dan Rather were asked about the worst experience they had had promoting their books...

...The question came as a surprise, amounting as it did to "What is the worst thing about dealing with us...

...The collected works of Shakespeare are a book, so is a mystery novel, and so is a restaurant guide...

...On "Night-line," as the convention was winding down, captains of the industry argued that there was no cause for alarm, since American publishing had always been every bit as crass and commercial as today...

...And you couldn't walk down an aisle or turn a corner without running into a lesbian literature booth...

...On the other hand, if you were an author and a literary agent chatted you up at a party (there was no shortage of those at the convention), she would likely tell you that the stories of publishing in decline and negligent editors were all true, except for the editors she would get you in touch with...

...To give you an example, I am a liberal and the other day I told a Helen Keller joke...

...Some people in the audience gasped in disbelief, prompting P. J. to explain that (a) he was not the same as in his National Lampoon days, and (b) he had said that one should not make such jokes, not that one could not make them...

...I didn't count, but my guess is that the three largest single categories represented were environmentalist books, New Age books, and gay and lesbian books...

...I hear someone from the magazine was at the show handing out copies of the story—rather like circulating The Closing of the American Mind at a conference of the Modern Language Association...

...If it makes money, why not...

...The audience, mostly clustered on a different side of the political spectrum, laughed a little guiltily, though P. J. went easy on their consciences and made nearly equal-opportunity fun of Democrats and Republicans ("Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it...

...you could pick up pens and buttons and lapel pins and cookies...

...What a comfort...

...Why do you always imply that liberals have no sense of humor...

...Books was plugging Josh Raphaelson and Jay Silverstein's I Worship the Very Dirt She beats Me Like: The Story of a Warm Caring Guy in a Society of Cold Calculating Women...

...Applewood Books is reissuing the original texts of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, which were altered in the 1960s—not so much to expunge sexism or racism as to excise overly complex language and concepts that might strain a young mind...

...Other items did not even pretend to be books: you could get your business card laminated into a luggage tag...

...On the floor of the trade show, though, it was far from a victory for Allan Bloom...

...I thought the handful of shrill Bohemian types outside the Javits Center handing out leaflets titled "Humanifesto" were protesting all this blatant Eurocentrism, but no one could quite figure out what they were about, other than the worthy pursuit of advertising themselves and their poetry-reading cafe...

...His comment that giving money and power to the government was "like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" puzzled me slightly: given some of P. J.'s erstwhile paeans to drunk driving, I almost took this to mean that he favored giving money and power to the government...

...The New Republic had just come out with a cover story on the publishing industry entitled "Houses of Ill Repute," which charged that commercialism was edging out quality and that, in the rush to make money, no one was editing manuscripts anymore...

...it was entertaining, buoyant, dynamic...