Judgment and the Marketplace

cat-lovers vs. books for cat-haters—is rich in observations on the modern psyche. What, for example, do books like preppy manuals and real men-real women sagas tell us? Merely that we haven't lost our sense of humor, and it doesn't hurt to be reminded of that once in a while. The book review editor has the right to go home and bury his nose in the collected works of D.H. Lawrence or Thomas Wolfe—but not until he has discharged his duty to his readership by alerting them to the wealth of published materials begging their attention. Which is not a responsibility to be scorned, for even the best-intentioned book-lover cannot instruct a reluctant reader in an appreciation of such fine distinctions as good booL· on the one hand and good literature on the other. A more worthwhüe endeavor is to encourage reading, even if it be in magazines or pulp fiction. As we all know, reading as an art form is already on the endangered list. As long as people are reading anything, they are at least exercising minds grown flabby through lifetimes of television passivity, spoon-fed prejudices and general day-to-day disinterest. A "lazy" reader who plods through a supermarket-rack Western at least has his mind switched on. Admittedly, recreational readers (say, one or two books a year) are not likely to be regular perusers of newspaper book pages, but if they should pause a moment in unfamiliar territory, they deserve better than insults and alienation. After all, there's no telling when the occasional reader might be tempted to make the crossover into mainstream fiction. JUDGMENT AND THE MARKETPLACE / Richard Rupp "The house of fiction," says Henry James, "has many windows." Surely any discussion of critics and reviewers ought to begin with the premise that we all live in the same house. And that house, like it or not, is built on economic cinderblocks, whether they be state taxes, tuition, or publishers' advances. Reviewers, first of all, have a considerable impact on book sales and on authors' reputations. To take an extreme example, consider what Malcolm Cowley did for William Faulkner. In 1946, when the Viking Portable Faulkner appeared, all but Sanctuary among Faulkner's novels were out of print; even the estimable Max Perkins was saying that Faulkner was finished. The Portable, however, was followed by the Collected Stories, and that volume by the Modern Library reprints of the novels. In December, 1950, as we all know, Faulker Betsy Kline THE MISSOURI REVIEW · 275 received the Nobel Prize for Literature. If Cowley's role in Faulkner's rediscovery is beyond dispute, what about lesser lights in the publishing universe? What about the role of the ordinary reviewer in the ordinary marketplace? To begin with, the reviewer is inevitably a part of the promotional process for a new book. In an article entitled "The Social Definition of Literature," Richard Ohmann notes the strong correlation between advertising and review space in the New York Times Book Review. For instance, a 1968 study showed that Random House bought 29 pages of ads and received 58 pages of reviews; Harper bought 29 pages and received 22; purchasing 29 pages of ads, Little, Brown received 21 pages of reviews. The correlation between advertising and review space in such cases is thus .76 + . Conversely, the study shows Dutton and Lippincott each buying 16 pages of ad space and receiving 4 pages of reviews apiece; for 9 pages of ad space, Harvard University Press received only negligible review space. The correlation between advertising space and review space in these three cases is .25-. (Quoted in Scholes and Comley, The Practice of Writing. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981, pp. 221-22.) A leading reviewer knows the role that he plays in the marketing of a book. But he also knows that his readers can distinguish hype from reasoned argument: he knows, in short, that they will distrust him if he regularly shUls for publishers. For both professional and personal reasons, the independent reviewer will keep some daylight between himself and the publisher's publicity department. He will maintain his integrity...