Paperback Paradise
McCann, William
Paperback Paradise by William McCann When Mae West, long ago, proclaimed her happy discovery that "too much of a good thing can be wonderful," she expressed the delight of many book buyers with...
...Paperbacks are bringing the book industry one-fifth of its total income...
...But in time, they came into the paperback field...
...Henry Adams' Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres and William Graham Sumner's Folkways, for examples, are available in the Mentor Series (N.A.L...
...75 cents), Marvin Meyers' The Jacksonian Persuasion (Vintage...
...This seems to be true...
...During the past five years, The Progressive has listed nearly 1,000 books thought to be especially worthy of its readers' notice...
...95 cents) and The Organization Man, by William H. Whyte, Jr...
...Most of us, I think, can agree with Mark Von Doren's statement on the paperback era: "We are lucky to live when we do, at least so far as good books are concerned...
...For the price, these volumes are marvels of paperback publication...
...Perhaps to answer this criticism, a number of publishers are bringing out good "originals" in nonfiction as well as in fiction and verse...
...Probably those readers who feel that Henry James, in his novels, chews much more than he bites off are not boundlessly grateful that The Old Pretender is available in forty paper-bound editions...
...It is not unusual this spring to see paperbacks priced as high as $3.25...
...What began eight years ago as a refreshing light shower (Double-day's Anchor books were the first welcome drops) has increased to an incessant downpour...
...Four out of five on the newsstands are by writers with little academic or critical prestige," says a publisher, "and their books continue to outsell the 'quality' paperback by a large margin...
...Thus the author, though he may not earn a proportionately larger income from his work, has the satisfaction of being much more widely and appreciatively read...
...One historian points out that the first paperback in this country was The Bay Psalm Book (1640...
...Now there are scores of competitors, university presses among them, in a fierce scramble for distribution and sales...
...My wife, who hasn't had a new hat, she says, since the cold war began, noticed that Richard M. Dorson's interesting American Folklore, for which I paid $4.50 a year or so ago, is out (University of Chicago Press) as a bright, new paperback at $1.75...
...The person credited with starting the whole blooming business is Jacob Epstein, a young man fresh out of Columbia University...
...It is undeniable, of course, that westerns, mysteries, historical novels, and tales of sex and violence still make up a large proportion of our paperbacks...
...This is wonderful...
...Not long ago, Harpers Torchbooks, praise be, brought out an attractive soft-cover edition at $1.85...
...They aren't, of course...
...Why, she asks, didn't I wait...
...Eighty years later, in paperbacks, James' hope has been abundantly realized...
...Epstein persuaded Dou-bleday to launch its Anchor Books, a series which had, among its first publications, such works as Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station and Constance Rourke's American Humor...
...1.25), and Basil Wil-ley's The Eighteenth Century Background (Beacon...
...There have been impressive improvements in the appearance and durability of paperbacks...
...We can not be told that cheap, paperback reprints of important, exciting books are a recent publishing idea...
...Much skill and artistry now go into the preparation of their covers, which are, for the most part, more sprightly and diverting than the dust-jackets of hardcover books...
...Says Professor Frank Freidel, "Never before has it been possible to purchase so many excellent books in the field of American history for so little money...
...Paperback Paradise by William McCann When Mae West, long ago, proclaimed her happy discovery that "too much of a good thing can be wonderful," she expressed the delight of many book buyers with today's profusion of high-quality paperbacks...
...The paperback," says Marchette Chute, "is the greatest achievement in portability since the invention of the sandwich...
...Nevertheless, high-quality paperbacks are appearing this spring in such astonishing numbers that even one whose avocation it is to keep track of them finds it difficult, though fun, to try...
...True...
...My daughter came home from college on a recent week-end with these books in her lugggage: The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, by Jacob Burckhardt (Mentor...
...No joy is unalloyed...
...New York's famed Fourth Avenue shops, they say, have been hard hit...
...at 75 cents each volume...
...I can only hope," wrote Henry James to Howells in 1878, "that some day my buried prose will kick off its various tombstones at once...
...But the same readers may be glad that D. H. Lawrence is available in twenty editions, or Jack Kerouac in ten...
...It is surely true that certain works of fiction which sold modestly in hard covers have sold at a prodigious rate in cheap, paper editions...
...But it is true that the modern efflorescence of "quality" paperbacks, with prices ranging from, say 65 cents to $3.25, began in the spring of 1953...
...Eric F. Goldman has pointed out that both books "argue that the new America is one in which people are undergoing a fundamental change in character and the change is hardly presented as an improvement...
...1.45...
...Two of the largest paperback sellers dealing with the subject of social and economic change (each has sold more than 450,000 copies) are David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (Anchor...
...Kirk's book sold for $6.50 when it came out in 1953...
...Critics of the paperback era have charged that excessive emphasis on the reprinting of previously published books has discouraged creative work by new writers and scholars and is an "enemy of promise...
...In many cases, though not invariably, the buyer gets his money's worth, a book of significance and substance which sold for, say, $7.50 in hard covers or was difficult to obtain at any price...
...1.45...
...There is, of course, another aspect of this...
...However, one notably encouraging aspect of this change, it seems to me, is reflected in the surprising volume of sales of the two books—serious, penetrating, and sophisticated as they both are...
...A selective catalog of currently available books lists more than 10,000 titles...
...Some creative writers, of course, are dubious about paperbacks...
...We are "lucky to live when we do," as Mark Van Doren said, "at least so far as good books are concerned...
...Hundreds of these volumes have now appeared in paperbound reprints...
...Is everybody happy...
...For years I abused my eyes in used-book stores looking for a modestly priced copy of Arthur O. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being...
...Dealers in secondhand books are generally not...
...The New American Library has done a particularly praiseworthy job of publishing important works at remarkably reasonable prices...
...2.25) and Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind (Gateway...
...And to the writer this is important...
...And Professor Gordon Ray: "It is not too much to say that the emergence of paperback books as a major factor in the publishing scene has revolutionized the study of literature, so greatly has it increased the availability both of literary works and of comments on these works...
...No wonder teachers are as pleased about this as the students and their parents...
...1.75...
...Fortunately, however, for students and scholars with restricted budgets it is still possible to buy a good book at 95 cents or less...
...There were paper-bound editions of good books in America in the Nineteenth Century...
...The Signet Classics (published by New American Library) for example, which sell at 50 cents a volume, are a handsomely designed, sturdily bound series, with excellent typography...
...Many of us now in middle-life who were raised on farms or in small towns had our first exposure to serious literature from the five-cent Little Blue Books published by the fabulous E. Haldeman-Julius...
...And this is an improvement...
...Jerome Weid-man, for one, generally approves...
...2.45...
...They fear that the more first-rate books there are at low prices, the harder it will be to persuade people to buy a young writer's interesting first novel...
...It is," he says, "one of the more rewarding aspects of the paperback phenomenon—and as phenomenons go, this one is studded with aspects as a baked ham is studded with cloves—that it provides the writer with that extraordinary thing for which every human being yearns but, the hard facts of life being as hard as they are, seldom gets: a second chance, or, more accurately, perhaps, in the case of a writer, a second hearing...
...Anchor...
...Well, not quite everybody...
...America's reading habits are changing, too...
...What's more, she had been reading them...
...Two recently issued reprints well worth their cost are Ernest Crawley's The Mystic Rose (Meridian...
...Professor Mason Gross says, "For over twenty years I have taught the history of philosophy and now for the first time 1 feel that my students and I have the material available to us for doing the job right...
...At first, other publishers seemed to view the Anchor venture with much skepticism...
...What are authors' reactions to the Paperback Revolution...
...Book buyers are obliged no longer to search for hours in dark, dusty stores for works long out of print...
...Oh yes, and James Thurber's Thurber Country (Simon and Schuster...
...And there are few cries of dissatisfaction...
Vol. 25 • June 1961 • No. 6
