Dear Editor
Dear Editor Tyler Congratulations for printing Gus Tyler's excellent article on the Moynihan plan ("The Politics of Pat Moynihan." NL, April 2). Though Nixon has abandoned the FAP scheme, the...
...will be permanently unable to participate in the national culture in any meaningful way...
...We vacillate, i believe, between two answers-represented by the two books Davis discerns in Kazin's Er'.i>Ut Bo>k of Life...
...Boston Anastasia Oliphant...
...Otherwise the lowest stratum of our society, while adequately (or inadequately) fed...
...Chicago Susan Wooi.iHobson's Choice Robert Gorham Davis' thoughtful essay in your Spring Book Issue ("Writers at the Mercy cf the Age...
...Field representatives help with problems of inventory and stock control, and coordinate their procedures with other wholesalers supplying lines to the same outlets...
...The fault lies with the publishers, for there is little the retailer can do to initiate reforms...
...In most other businesses-such as greeting cards, house wear, even apparel—-the small retail store owner receives substantial backup from the manufacturer...
...On top of that, almost any other retail business is potentially more profitable...
...The task is not simply to keep people from starving but also to overcome the division in the United States between the culturally and economically deprived and the rest of us...
...NL, May 14) raises a question that dates back at least to the time of the French Revolution: What is the role of the artist in modern society...
...Al-tnough he does not pursue the point, the acute shortage of retail outlets is largely responsible for the vicious circle cf low volume and high unit cost that has made hardcover books uncompetitive...
...This division leads to the schizoid sensibility that characterizes our epoch, and literary critics like Kazin are not the only people whose work suffers as a result...
...Berkeley Carl Landaulr Professor of Economics, University of California Give Books a Chance In examining the effects "Paper(back) Dollars" are having on American book publishing...
...Tyler formulated the decisive question: Should FAP be "a part of or a substitute for the welfare state...
...Edward T. Chase (NL...
...May 14) uses the telling phrase, "the few honest-to-God bookstores that still exist in this country...
...The various houses could easily lighten the burden on the store owner by making their procedures uniform or, preferably, joining together and centralizing supply networks...
...It would also result in increased sales and profits...
...A majcr factor in the success cf the paperback revolution, moreover, was that soft-cover publishers were able to take advantage of a separate, ready-made distribution system -the one for magazines (i.e...
...Novelists seem no better able to merge these two identities, leaving readers with the Hobson's choice between Saul Bellow's plodding sermonizing on the one hand, and Vladimir Nabokov's frivolous gamesmanship on the other...
...drug stores, newsstands, chain stores, etc...
...Every publisher offers different terms and arrangements, and each has to be dealt with separately...
...Though Nixon has abandoned the FAP scheme, the problems dealt with in the piece are still current, and will emerge with the inevitable rebound from the present attempt to dismantle the war-against-poverty institutions...
...Of course it should be a part-the poor need services as well as money...
...If the industry offered just a little cooperation, it might well find many more people willing to go into the business— and honest-to-God bookstores might cease to be a dying institution in this country...
...Better backup for the neighborhood bookstore would improve stock-on-hand, display, and order filling, and perhaps give the harried clerk time to talk to customers and actually sell books...
...The amount of paperwork involved alone is enough to discourage all except the most dedicated bibliophile from opening a bookstore...
...Either we consider the artist to be a teacher, a moralist explaining the nature and possibilities of human existence to a bewildered age, or we view him as an esthetic iconoclast, an ironic outsider aloof from the mundane grubbiness of life...
...But not the book industry...
...Despite radical changes in the marketing methods cf most other businesses, the distribution of hardcover books remains essentially the same as it was 40 years as...
Vol. 56 • May 1973 • No. 11
