Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 30

28 Wednesday, June 7, 1978 Philadelphia Daily News epiener Now You Know Atlantis Discovered? That's what undersea explorers claim they've found in the Bermuda Triangle. Diver Ari Marshall says he found a submerged pyramid under 600 feet of and he has videotape to prove it. The tape showed two holes on opposite faces of the four-sided object, with water and mysterious particles shooting out of one opening and being sucked into the opposite hole. i cCuSHoyolh Rises Critics Above i ess vt -s By JULIA LAWLOR "SOME PEOPLE JUST ATTRACT cosmic disasters," Colleen McCuIlough says of her best-selling family saga, "The Thorn Birds." Her mother, who in some ways resembles the character of Meggie Cleary in the book, was always tripping over them. Colleen, on the other hand, looks disaster in the face and throws one of her big, broad-grinned.

Wicked-Witch-of-the-West laughs at it. So far, it's worked every time. McCuIlough began writing her novel spanning three generations of a New Zealand sheep-raising family on a Friday the 13th in July. A year and almost 700 pages later, she finished. The publishers, intrigued by her courage, agreed to release the book on Friday the 13th of May 1977.

The rest was left to Providence and the whims of the reading public. "It was a success from the minute it was on the market," McCuIlough says proudly. But it was the auctioning of the paperback rights to Avon Books for a record price of S1.9 million that gave "The Thorn Birds" its place in commercial, if not literary, history. The previous record was $1.85 million, for E. L.

Docto-row's "Ragtime." McCuIlough, with the slightly frazzled air of a tour-weary author, admitted she kept her nose out of the paperback rights race. "I was in England trying to become a nurse," she explained. "I didnt know anything about the deal the totally ignorant author, that's me. When I heard, I got very depressed. I said they're going to put me in an Ivory Tower and nobody'll love me anymore.

My first thought was that it wiped out any kind of favorable reviews. And that's true. Had it not been such a smash, it wouldn't have gotten such lousy reviews." ALTHOUGH "THE THORN BIRDS" has earned some good reviews, McCuIlough is livid on the subject of power-hungry critics. "They have too many axes to grind. They flatter themselves that they can make or break a book.

Saving I have good descriptive powers is a cop-out You can't write 200,000 words of description. Obviously, it's the people in the book that make it good." One critic wrote, "McCuIlough has not made literature. For a season or so, her book will make commercial history." Another suggested that the book was "a boutique of fantasies" directed at women, since "women consume fiction because they have been culturally deprived of the power fantasies men get in business." "It's a load of codswallop," McCuIlough retorts. "You'd be amazed at how many men have read the book." Her answer to criticism of late, after the book became the Literary Guild selection of the month and broke a publishing world record, is "I can thumb my nose at them now." McCULLOUGH GREW UP in the Australian sheep country, and then in Sydney. As a neu-rophysiologist at Yale, she wrote the first two drafts of the entire work in a summer.

"I was miserable over a man, although that's nothing new," she says. And although she remembers it as "a pleasurable experience, writing straight through from six in the morning to eight a.m. the next day, she also talks of swollen feet and ankles from sitting for so long. "All this fuss" about the book happened during her nursing studies. But the hospital wouldn't take her, she says, since she's too easily recognized.

"My face is too well known. I'm not Alec Guinness," she says, referring to her startling, 200-lb. figure. "I can't just disappear in a crowd." Her next book, the author promises, will not be another "Thorn Birds." "That's my bash at the family saga, and now I want a bash at something else." The ideas for her books, she explains, usually take off in the middle of whatever work of fiction she's finishing at the moment While she wrote her first novel, "Tim," she was contemplating the grandiose The Thorn Birds." Her next, to be set in a Soho-like setting in Sydney called King's Cross, will be written, of course, in the same traditional grand storytelling style. "A REAL NOVEL has a beginning, a middle and an end.

It has people, incidents, happenings. It's not introspective, autobiographical, rehashed psychological stream of conscious- f-s Photography by W.R. EVERLY 3D Colleen McCuIlough: 'I wrote the book to please myself ness. Most people who write well are writing much more precious novels to please the critics. I wrote the book to please myself.

It's the kind of novel I would read." In December, when her touring is finished (she also plans to promote the book in Australia), McCuIlough can get back to the business of life. "In order to write, you have to first live," she says. "Although I don't consciously go out and say this is my day to live, tomorrow I'll go into a coma. I'm not going to let writing rule my life." So, when the muse strikes, McCuIlough will still be basking in the profits of her second novel, the paperback that broke" the publishers backs. "I'll write a book every five years, and I'll give myself four years to think about it that's goof off time." Still more laughter, of the sort that starts in the chest, rises to the throat, and wavers as the smile fades pointed, of course, in the face of disaster.

post-Watergate questions of morality, since it says that Mrs. Kennedy took an estimated $2-million worth of gifts given to her as First Lady out of the White House after the Presi-' dent's assassination. Such gifts are supposed to belong to the government. Daughter Dings Dad The daughter of Massachusetts Sen. Edward W.

Brooke has admitted she leaked her father's financial statements to the news media so her parents' divorce case would be reopened. The revelations have landed the senator in a pot of hot water and in court where he'll answer questions surrounding a controversial $49,000 loan. Remi Brooke Petit telephoned station WBZ Sunday night after her father had appeared and told the talk show host that "I really feel bitter that I've had to peddle anything in or der for my mother to get a fair trial. I love my father," she said in the radio interview. I'm bitter we had to go to the press to hear my mother's case again." 'Great One' Will Shrink Doctors in Chicago say Jackie Gleason should be back in harness in two months, but the price may be high for "The Great One." He's got to shed about 40 ponds and kick his five-pack-a-day cigarette habit.

The 62-year-old comedian now carries 235 pounds on his 5-foot-7 frame. Tomlin Shrinks Lily Tomlin will put her planned spoof of "The Incredible Shrinking Man" before the cameras later this year. It'll be retitled "The Incredible Shrinking Woman," of course, and will be shot in 3-D. Jackie Revealed A new biography of Jackie Onassis is due to hit the stands this fall and it will be an eye-popper. Among disclosures In the book, "Jackie, written by Kitty Kelly, are revelations that she underwent electro-shock therapy during her early years of being married to Sen.

Jack Kennedy. The incident was hushed-np. The reason for her Jack's numerous infidelities. As one source quoted in the book says: "To (Kennedy) the White House was a playpen. If he wanted a woman, he'd take her.

He went in for quantity, not quality. I once caught him messing around in the Cabinet Room of the White House." The book will also raise some interesting Jackie eye-popper.