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AUGUST 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $50 hardback, $19.95 paper). This novel first appeared in English 17 years ago. Since then the 1970 Nobel laureate has added some 300 pages to his fictional but heavily researched saga of Russia's catastrophic involvement in World...
...will be years before the complete cycle of novels is available in English. But an enormous preview of what lies in store is being published this week as August 1914 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 854 pages; $50 hardback, $19.95 paper). This novel first appeared in English in 1972; after his banishment from the U.S.S.R., Solzhenitsyn was free to explore new troves of archival material, particularly at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and has now expanded the text by some 300 pages. Much of the additional material concerns the evil (in Solzhenitsyn's view) activities of Lenin during Russia's hasty entrance into...
...Born Again and John Ehrlichman's The Company. By the time Richard Nixon's book came along, in 1978, a Committee to Boycott Nixon's Memoirs had been born. Its slogan, "Don't buy books from crooks," failed to work; the Nixon tome earned him $2.2 million, and the hardback became a best seller. But the phrase caught the spirit of the only official ethical stand that Americans have ventured on sensational exploitations. In some 30 states, so-called Son of Sam laws (named for the serial murderer who killed six young women in New York City...
...first book, Oh, God!, provided the base for three George Burns movies. His third sold few hardback copies, but everyone knew its name after Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep appeared in the film adaptation of Kramer vs. Kramer. This latest work, too, is scheduled to go before the cameras. Once again, viewers are likely to outnumber readers. A pity; Avery Corman, 51, has a literary gift for dialogue and predicament. Sealed in a time capsule, 50 could tell future generations more about contemporary middle-age mores than a library of sociological theses...
Unfortunately, Leland is trapped in the airy territory of hardback fiction, where tastes are as refined as sales are poor. If he's lucky, some canny product get the film rights and turn it into a mini-series which those with brain cells can actually watch. Or perhaps he can persuade Avon books to buy it up, put on a slightly racy cover hinting of decadent Southern sensuality and drag a few suburban housewives into the realm of real literature. Otherwise, Mrs. Randall will remain a pleasure reserved only for those in the know...