Word: bantam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bantam Books bought the privilege of publishing Destiny for $1,015,000, "a sum," its publicity release announces, "greater than the combined advances earned by Stephen King, James Michener, Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steel for their first novel." Aside from the tantalizing but possibly erroneous suggestion of a King-Michener-Sheldon-St eel collaboration, there is not much to celebrate. For one thing, a cool million no longer induces the slack-jawed awe it once did; everyone knows that insider traders on Wall Street can steal that much before lunch. And British Author Sally Beauman is not really a first...
Destiny offers a hero, Edouard, who has more vowels in his name than seem strictly necessary, and a heroine, Helene, who suffers from a superfluity of accent marks in hers. A lot of ink is wasted just getting these characters on the page. Given its initial investment, Bantam might have urged Beauman to save money by calling her romantic leads Ed and Helen. Anyhow, Edouard is impossibly rich and handsome; Helene is impossibly beautiful; together they are . . . a word comes to mind but then vanishes in the general miasma of implausibilities and sex, which is regularly rapturous and accompanied...
...Updike turned to Bantam Books, which agreed to publish his novel, unedited, in paperback. Knopf was forced to change its hardcover versions to include the original text in order to compete, Updike said...
...Bantam; 221 pages...
...Bantam; 358 pages...