Word: novels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With the average novel costing close to $10 and other books priced at $15 to $18 or more, hard-cover sales are down by nearly 10% compared with last year; even "quality" paperbacks selling in the $4 range are gathering dust on publishers' bookshelves...
According to the cabbies of American fiction, Philip Roth has a great glove but can't hit the long ball. The fans will always yearn for the big shot that resounds with bulging affirmations and conventional wisdom. Roth even parodied this expectation in The Great American Novel (1973), a 400-page indulgence of his gifts for lampoon and mimicry...
Even in bedrock New England, Eleanor Clark's home territory (Baldur's Gate; Eyes, Etc.), the center no longer holds. In her latest novel, hippies, religious freaks and motorcycle gangs have invaded the hills; developers have subdivided the landscape and dispersed the natives. Everyone is adrift, "looking for something-truth, identity, ripoffs, drug deals, lost dogs, new mates, carpentry jobs, socio-political this and that...
Author Maas' novel is a comedy of terrors that is all the more absorbing because of the methods used by both sides: the law bending the law, the mob making a farce of it. The area's top don, whom Wainwright is out to get despite his non-involvement in the case, roves free as a boccie ball. King Kong, among others, is appropriately retired by his own associates. Amazingly, Richie Flynn comes out a little wealthier and healthier, though back to selling booze...
...books on the war fills up a dozen type-crammed pages of Books in Print. In light of it all, it is no surprise that Herman Wouk's latest fiction, War and Remembrance, has occupied the bestseller list for 44 weeks, nor that this year's big novel, William Styron's Sophie's Choice, is haunted by echoes of the Holocaust...