THE WEALS AND WOES OF UNIVERSITY PRESSES

...and the other brother (in arms) here is of course D'Artagnan...

...Many university publishers reminded me that, after all, the fat years of grants to higher education and hence, by trickle-down, to the university presses, that obtained in the 1960s were atypical...

...For CIItelog and further inforfflBhon, write ClDOC..oo.,,0, u..VACA,.,x,co That is not only patience, it is pluck...

...will make the adaptations necessary to keep themselves afloat...

...turned the most sophisticated of the nation's campi into intellectual playpens and daycare centers, where everybody's private hobby became elevated to the dignity of a discipline...

...Webb has suggested that until the precedents for federal financing have become firmly established, directors put in their requests for such aid through the mediating operations of an AAUP committee designed for that express purpose, rather than making contact directly on their own...

...However, this has not provided a solution since quality paperback sales are falling off either because students cannot afford to buy books even at the low paperback prices or because student enrollments are declining or a combination of the two...

...New times," says H. George Fletcher, director of Fordham University Press, "have caught up with the Just so- but, alas and ironically, At the heart of the matter, of Most university presses except for like Princeton University Press, mood of the press...

...The Director of a small southeastern press told me that quite honestly he has no real hope for substantial aid from Washington, at least until a more prosperous economy makes higher education again a good business risk for everybody concerned...

...But in Lester's version all that nonsense has been cut out in order to get at the other nonsense--the nonsense that's left over when you relieve the Musketeers of their ideals and let them just be devoted to wreaking havoc and nothing more...

...Even," said this gal, "if you read Howard Mumford Jones' Revolution and Romanticism, Marvin Spivack's The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare, Bernard Bailyn's The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, Alex Inkeles' and David Horton Smith's Becoming Modern, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed, Raoul Berger's Executive Privilege, and Paul C. Mangeldorf's Corn, you'd still be a second-rate mind...

...Frankly," comments August Frug6, Director of the University of California Press, "I don't think we would want it, and I wonder whether the other larger university presses would, remembering that aid is seldom given without strings...

...the very large ones-which is a separate corporation---depend upon them, and at both ends of the publishing process...

...Typical of these nostrums were cuts in production and limited press runs...

...Dissertations," Putnam predicted, "will probably be declined forthwith . . . . " And manuscripts which are accepted will, in all likelihood, be expected to reach their editors' desks in more polished and presentable form than hitherto...

...Chamberlain is entirely too handsome and dandy to belong...

...Unfortunately, the university presses have received their lumps with everyone else...

...the limitation of academic discounts and individual credit...

...It remains a question whether the academic establishment's recent renunciation of the sanities of life and the doings of their economic emissaries to the national capital have fatally undermined the operations of a small band of dedicated men who for years have been publishing a disproportionately large number of all books produced within these United States that are generally worth reading...

...There are, of course, a multiplicity of reasons for the miserable estate o[ higher education, important among which are the slump which has followed in the wake of the formidable expansion of the 1960s, the exhaustion of the glut of student bodies produced by the postwar baby boom, and the dire state of the U.S...

...Since a blank expression and a pointed sword are what's needed to play this naive fellow, Lester has awarded the role to Michael York, the only member of the cast with training as a Shakespearean actor...

...In scenes with grander circumstances and nobler intent, the Three Musketeers often play only supporting roles...

...I am speaking of the present appalling condition of American higher education which, until alleviated, is probably destined to make even the shrewdest gyrations of the university press directors ultimately futile...

...Room and board in Cuernavaca from about S100 monthly...

...Surely even the least practiced eye can see in these developments a potential drastic reduction of the vast backwash of learned trivia which now encumbers the scholarly professions...

...Ultimately," said Mr...

...And to fit his players to their parts, Lester has chosen two amicably dissipated stars, Oliver Reed and Frank Finlay, to play Athos and Porthos...

...The University of California Press stands to lose its subsidy which means, in the words of its director, a return only to "normal hard times...

...a mark-up in list prices, with which, generally speaking, professors and libraries will bear ("If we could get a few academics to sit down and recognize," one director complained to me, "that if they'll go out in the evening and spend $25 for dinner they can afford a book that they'll have the rest of their lives, they'll bitch less") ; and sometimes, but infrequently as of yet, cutbacks in staff and advertising...

...While 1973 witnessed its revival, it witnessed too the demise of a small press only eight years old--the university press of Case Western University, which in time of stringency discovered its publishing activities to be simply beyond its means...

...course, are subsidies...

...And thus too the New York Public Library recently announced that it has entered into an arrangement with Yale, Columbia and Harvard Libraries whereby one copy of any given book or journal can be purchased between the four of them, and then shared by means of photocopy and a sophisticated network of centralized catalogues, teletype machines and open telephone lines...

...24 May 1974:284...

...Others, however, are markedly less optimistic about the federal aid question, both on the grounds of the likelihood and the desirability of such aid...

...Imagine a mongrel dog, running in yodeling circles Commonweal: 281 and with a diamond ring tied to his tail, and you have a pretty accurate notion of the relationship academia as presently constituted bears to its university presses...

...You will discover that less than three months of disciplined study in this demanding program will enable you to speak correctly and fluently--at least in everyday conversation and in your professional field...

...Such has been-such is--the puissance of the university presses in their fullest and most luxuriant flower...

...All of these six blockbusters, by my count, were Harvard University Press books, and the booth, as gracefully understated as a proper Bostonian's Rambler automobile, was the Harvard University Press exhibit...

...Those presses, in short, are currently dependent for their lifeblood upon one of the most busted and benighted sections of the American economy, and so it begins to appear that the succoring agents which spawned them and protected them against ihe predatory commercial publishers have degenerated into their single greatest liability...

...Says Thompson Webb, Jr.: "Things right now are perhaps comparable to 1933...

...This is, then, a somewhat more jaded band of Musketeers than Dumas accustomed us to as schoolchildren (though not so jaded that today's schoolchildren shouldn't go to the film...

...Due to no fault of their own, then the university presses are harassed to the degree where they have become, as John Putnam says, "a zero-growth industry...

...but now the boom is over, and the taxpayers and the politicians are in the saddle and riding the academicians hard...

...One-time registration fee to both the language school and CI DOC academy: $100...

...Times then were hard, and for a long time afterward...

...17.95 Vanderbilt University Press Nashville 9 Tennessee 9 37235 STUDY IN CUERNAVACA, MEXICO ,.,o.,LEAR N EFFECTIVE WAYTO SPANISH STUDY SiX HOURS EACH DAY FOUR STUDENTS PER TEACHER REGISTER FOR WEEKLY PERIODS/S45 START ANY FIRST OR THIRD MONDAY If you have decided to master Spanish, explore CIDOC for a minimum of four weeks...

...and tossed anti-intellectual concepts, like overripe vegetables, at policemen and other intolerables...

...All of this, needless to say, is to the good: if these things can be accomplished, then the present academic drought, like the late oil shortage, will not have been in vain...

...The fate of the small presses is thus uncertain, but even the big and established houses seem to have leveled out as far as the quantity of their sales and the number of their annual titles is concerned...

...A couple of years ago CHILTON WILLIAMSON, JR...

...Most of these difficulties however, can be surmounted by more careful budgeting and by more streamlined editorial policies, and by well-advised experimentation in the various aspects of publishing that do not pertain to the production of books...

...Should such a practice become widespread, due to the paucity of library funds everywhere, the adverse effect upon the scholarly publishers would be very great...

...Throughout all of this madness the university presses plugged along, taking manuscripts from the few sensible academicians who had energy left at the end of the day for serious research, an~ :eav[ng s2Iy theories and :he s:ilier personalities behind them to the newspapers--and then to the magazines and finally to the commercial publishers who found Mark Rudd and Tom Hayden better for American business than those gentlemen might have supposed...

...Thus pinched by the rapid shrinking of their subsidies, university presses are beginning to turn to the federal government for direct aid...

...FUN FOR ALL AND ALL FOR FUN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE SCREEN The way director Richard Lester interprets it, "one for all and all for one" could well be the motto of the Marx Brothers rather than the Three Musketeers...

...economy...

...Putnam, for one, calls upon the professoriat, whose interest in the state of university publishing is a direct and vital one, not merely to bear with the problems of their publishers, but also to take a harder look at the treatises hatched by their special disciplines and determine in advance what could, without loss to civilization, be weeded out from the plethora of verbiage with which their prot6g6s flood the editorial offices of the scholarly presses...

...Because of the difficulty in selling cloth-bound books to college librar.;es," writes Mr...

...One of Charles Hamilton's Waspish young ladies stared disdainfully at a custom-shifted young gentleman seated at a desk behind a stage-prop bookshelf...

...And, at the same end but at another location, funds from one source or another, sometimes the federal government, support the libraries which constitute a principal market for scholarly publications...

...Ailments beyond those of the publishing industry in general I was, last month, one of the thousand six hundred and eleven publishers, historians, and other assorted intelligentsia to attend the annual jamboree of the Organization of American Historians, held this year in Denver, Colorado...

...If nothing else, such training teaches an actor to look perplexed and duel well...

...an increase in the amount of printing farmed out to printers abroad...

...Today it is bad luck to be ten blocks from one of the ivied oasis, and many of the younger professors are applying for business school...

...As I pranced along through the book exhibits in pursuit of my professional duties, spearing authors and glaring at competitors, the cold green light of a couple of vodka tonics in my veins, I spotted an enlarged cartoon done in a familiar style--the only aspect of the unpretentious booth it graced to catch my eye...

...Sales and titles have reached a plateau of sorts and are, as likely as not, to take a mild header in the foreseeable future...

...an end to the printing of symposia...

...Another Prospect Perhaps one of the more salubrious aspects of what was a couple of years ago called "the coming crisis" is the prospect of what John B. Putnam, Executive Director of the AAUP, calls parapublishing, whereby "such relatively ephemeral and short-run work are unrevised dissertations and research reports would be issued in essentially unedited form," and of so-called "alternate methods" of publishing: "microfiche, videotape and other glamorous manifestations of the new technologies...

...to its detriment...

...But the blight which most seriously afflicts the scholarly publishers is, alas, far more fundamental to their operations and far more likely to persist beyond the present economic dyspepsia produced by the economic wizards of Washington...

...Webb, at the 1973 meeting of the AAUP in Austin, Texas, "Washington might become the largest source of outside 24 May 1974:.282 funds for university presses," and certainly there are some grounds for optimism...

...Congress has already appropriated $230,000 to be administered by the National Historical Publication Commission and delivered up to the university presses engaged in the publication of historical works...

...At one end, the parent university, itself traditionally blessed with liberal endowments from many sources, acquires the funds to pass on to the press it sponsors...

...more, a committee of the AAUP has submitted an application for what Webb describes as "substantial support" from NHPC which is presently under review...

...Perry, " . . . we tried emphasizing paperbacks, of which we have published over 200 titles...

...Many of the ailments that beset the university presses are simply the prevailing woes that presently weaken the macroeconomy of the publishing industry in general...

...The only Musketeer who doesn't seem to fit is the third one, Aramis, played by Richard Chamberlain...

...For most of that decade academics of the higher variety--students, professors and administrators alike---lectured the taxpayers and insulted the powers and principalities of the city, state and federal governments...

...8.95 The Urban Scene in the Seventies edited by JAMES F. BLUMSTEIN and EDDIE J. MARTIN Proceedings of a conference on public policy for urban minorities and the poor in the 1970s, held at Fisk and Vanderbilt Universities in 1972...

...is Editor of St...

...At the moment, fiscal liquidity at all of these points is evaporating...

...Martin's Press...

...Thus, in turn, Bernard Perry, Director of Indiana University Press, opines that "While Indiana has always given moral support to its University Press, the University has never been in a worse position to give the Press financial support even if they wished to do so...

...And Donald Ellegood, Director of the University of Washington Press, tells me that " . . . More support is coming already from the two Endowments (for the Arts and for the Humanities) as well as agencies such as the National Science Foundation . . . . We are receiving more subsidy support from these sources presently, than from our parent university...

...Already the library market is faltering...

...But much more typical is the quiet impression of Louis T. Iglehart of the University of Tennessee Press who believes that "The financial plight of scholarly publishing is better known than it was formerly, and at least some Congressmen have shown an interest in keeping alive the situation...

...Commonweal: 283 Very Sure of God Religious Language In the Poetry of Robert Browning by E. LEROY LAWSON A study of the spiritual insight evidenced by Browning's poetry...

...But it is not unfair to suggest that if the colleges and universities are the victims of a number of diseases presently endemic to American society, they are also the victims of an atmosphere which they in the heydey of their naughtiness in the '60s did much to create...

...in-home" composition, which Matthew N. Hodgson of the University of North Carolina Press claimed had resulted in an annual saving of 30 percent in costs...

...In any event, the presses are moving upon the Feds with discretion: Mr...

...He's the odd man out, like Zeppo...

...Their big scene in this film is not some acrobatic rescue or daring raid into the domains of Cardinal Richelieu (Charhon Heston), but rather a fracas in a tavern where they are trying to steal their dinner...

...For all the brawling and wenching in Alexander Dumas' novel, we always know that deep down inside his Musketeers are devoted to France and ever vigilant to serye her...

...Meantime, there are certain short-term and immediate problems to be grappled with...

...The costs of printing and mailing are rising steadily, and the cost of paper is increasing geometrically...

...an evil rumor appeared to the effect that that same Harvard Press was in a moribund condition: today it flourishes once again under a fancy new director rushed up from New York from the offices of Basic Books, but Harvard is a grand and prestigious house and hence capable of a remission...

...As the very mention of Zeppo must remind you, however, the Musketeers, like the Marx Brothers, were really four rather than three...

...Those presses, however, like nearly everything else that creeps and breathes and tries to make an income these days, are in the doldrums...

...And it is pluck, together with a horse's dose of common sense, that keeps under the protection of God organizations not devoted primarily to the pursuit of the dollar...

...Federal funding, then, is at best an uncertain and somewhat distant proposition...

...Indigenous to university presses," says Thompson Webb, Jr., President of the Association o[ American University Publishers and Director of the University of Wisconsin Press, "is the effect of rising prices on taxpayers...

...At a series of "confessions" at the Austin meeting, covered by John F. Baker and Chandler B. Grannis for Publishers Weekly, university publishers got together to give tongue to their woes and to parade their panaceas...

...But scholarly publishers are accustomed to travail, and it is my guess that, save perhaps for a few of the smallest and weakest that depend almost wholly on university subsidies for their pitiful existence, that they...

...11.95 Architecture of Middle Tennessee edited by THOMAS B. BRUMBAUGH, MARTHA I. STRAYHORN, and GARY G. GORE Photographs, drawings, and short histories of area buildings included in the Historic American Buildings Survey...

...On the other end, endowment funds "allow a university to staff itself with the sort of people who buy scholarly titles, and also to subsidize, in its turn, the students who are required to purchase the same books for their courses...

...For a time it was a sellers' market as far as the educational establishment was concerned...

...They did improve, ultimately...