Underground Appeal
Rivers, William L.
Underground Appeal The Underground Press in America, by Robert J. Glessing. Indiana University Press. 207 pp. $6.50. Reviewed by William L. Rivers In the mail that has just arrived on my desk is...
...It is difficult to think of any aspect he has not at least touched on, and the chapter on graphics is especially notable for making clear how seriously and imaginatively the under-grounders, unlike most of the editors of conventional papers, think about graphic art...
...These are bad, but my chief complaint is that someone who worked on this book has shifting ideas about singulars and plurals...
...One editor says of the classifieds: "We would like to phase them out but financially we can't exist without them...
...Glessing is able to accomplish all this in less than two hundred pages primarily because he favors the quick insight over the extended analysis...
...Surely any Mariettan who troubled to think could find a local newspaper to reflect and nourish his ideas...
...That leaves plenty of room for the underground papers, which, as Glessing makes clear, speak directly and passionately to their readers...
...Winn writes, "we must anticipate a sale of 5,000 to 10,000 copies...
...His book has a nice flavor...
...it seems to me that Glessing quotes just enough of the various vulgarities one finds in the underground press to give the aura without being offensive...
...The success of many underground papers, Mrs...
...Reflecting on this payment, I have decided that university presses may not have changed all that much...
...There is much to be said, it seems to me, about one of the wounding flaws in the conventional press...
...But in Marietta, as elsewhere, many newspapers have died and merged, and what remains is often a common denominator that tries to speak to and for everyone—and thus reaches and touches no one...
...First, I'd ask the author or the editor to clear up the rough-hewn grammar that is sprinkled around in the book...
...Early on, a "generation" is "it," but on Page 116 "generation" is followed by "their...
...Winn, is probably the best reason for your bringing out a paperback version of The Underground Press in America...
...Because we straights are sometimes guilty of imagining that the underground is monolithic, the many varying viewpoints Glessing has unearthed make his book valuable...
...The phrase "underground press" is "it" on 114 and "they" on 119...
...Glessing's comments on economics suggest that if their own editors couldn't kill them, no other malevolent force is likely to be able to...
...I doubt that I would have been able to resist it...
...The underground needs an inexpensive chronicle, and this is the best I have seen...
...If you argue that the paperback market for university press books is made up largely of college students, I will contend that my point is proved...
...ANTHEA LAHR is a free lance writer whose reviews have appeared in The Village Voice, The Nation, and The University Review...
...I dislike seeing one of the most successful of the young publications referred to as "Rolling Stone" on one page and "Rolling Stones" on another...
...It should provoke enough serious interest so that you can avoid displaying it in any of those supermarket traps...
...Most seem to prefer to let pictures wash over them...
...Very well, Mrs...
...In most of the latter, the editors worry over their practices and speak seriously about their mission...
...Finally, I think that if changes in the text are to be made, the author should reflect again on the reasons for the success of the underground press...
...Because your current seasonal catalog does not indicate that you try to con prospective book-buyers, I assume that instead of shooting for those 5,000 to 10,000 sales by printing underground classified advertisements on the cover ("Orgy Guide: Get some flesh...
...But Robert Glessing did, and a moment of reflection on the fact that these items are available in profusion in the profuse underground press suggests that he was wise...
...Sex-filled places to go in L.A...
...For example, I am irritated by "prophesy" where "prophecy" is clearly intended on Page 97...
...The book has chapters on history, graphics, causes, unrest, radical politics, underground news services, economics, content, audiences, language, campus papers, military papers, influences, and the future...
...or by picturing a shapely woman whose leer intimates that her every orifice does double duty, you plan for the book to sell itself on its merits...
...The temptation to flavor this book with the more titillating underground press classifieds and quotations from the most outrageous and appealing articles must have been strong...
...Let me say right off that the merits of The Underground Press in America are considerable...
...WILLIAM L. RIVERS, professor of communication at Stanford, wrote "The Opinionmakers" and edited "The Adversaries: Politics and the Press...
...The underground editors are not all of one mind...
...It is a matter of distance...
...There was a time when we looked to the university presses for long studies of obscure treaties and for appreciations of minor poets that seemed long whatever their length, most of them springing—if the term is not too lively for its context— from dissertations and other endless enterprises...
...Winn, will certainly appeal to the paperback trade...
...The commercial media have simply grown too far away from their readers...
...I don't know whether you plan to revise anything but the cover as you convert the hardback to paperback, but I would...
...If, on the other hand, this is an offensive report, you may want to signal by sending Writing as a Process of Discovery: Some Structured Theme Assignments for Grades Five Through Twelve...
...Frye...
...It is now quite clear that some of them will last—even a few that have survived appalling business practices...
...JoAnn Winn, who wants me to advise her whether to bring out a paperback edition of The Underground Press in America, by Robert J. Glessing, a professor of journalism at Canada College...
...The Underground Press Syndicate "makes" on 120, but it is also "they," while the High School Independent Press Service is apparently "it," since "HIPS was tied in more closely with the national high school underground press scene" (Page 131...
...Before we decide to issue a paperback reprint," Mrs...
...Nor am I talking about typographical errors and other varieties of carelessness, but there are more of those than one book can afford...
...I have been able to find in it only five reprints of classifieds, and there are not many more quotations from underground articles than there are quotations from interviews with underground editors...
...He is co-author of a forthcoming book, "A Region's Press...
...I quell the urge to mine it primarily because Mrs...
...However, Allan Katzman of the East Village Other argues: "They perform an important service for the sexually frustrated and lonely New York readers who have no other advertising medium...
...Few students read lengthy things these days—or anything, if they can help it...
...She is the wife of the writer, John Lahr...
...This, Mrs...
...But Indiana University Press has not only published The Underground Press in America, it has also published The Supermarket Trap, by Jennifer Cross, and judging from the splashy little advertisements I have seen here and there for both books, many an author who is disgruntled because his publisher seems to smuggle books into print might be happier sending his manuscripts to Blooming-ton, Indiana...
...Reviewed by William L. Rivers In the mail that has just arrived on my desk is a letter from the "rights and permissions" editor of Indiana University Press, Mrs...
...The size of that minimum goal for the paperback and the fact that the hardcover edition was issued just minutes ago make me itch to write something profound on New Directions in Academic Publishing...
...A friend who grew up in Marietta, Ohio, in the early years of this century, remembers with something like awe that five newspapers flourished there at one time during his boyhood...
...DONALD OSTERBROCK is a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin...
...If all this helps you make a decision, you can thank me by sending as my consultant's fee a copy of an item in your Midland paperback series, The Well-Tempered Critic, by Northrop THE REVIEWERS GABRIEL GERSH is a free lance writer and critic...
...There is value, too, in Glessing's effort to encompass everything...
...Winn suggests that in return for my work as a "consultant" in this decision I "choose some books from our current seasonal catalog...
...Winn, let us consider whether The Underground Press in America should go into paperback —and whether you will need to put it into some of those supermarket traps to reach your goal...
...No, I don't mean cleaning up rough language...
...All this, of course, is a rich lode for commentary on academic publishing...
Vol. 35 • February 1971 • No. 2
