Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 164

A novel publishing idea .1. Ul Samuel Eliot Morison America's foremost historian completes his classic THE EUROPEAN 7 6 -vl DISCOVERY OF AMERICA The Southern Voyages Admiral Morison recaptures the voyages of Columbus, Magellan, and Drake in a rare combination of history and dramatic narrative in the concluding volume of his monumental study of the discovery of America. "The whole is a triumph." Kirkus. "A smooth-flowing narrative that is rich in detail and human interest." 'V 4 X0i Publishers Weekly 200 33 maps, $17.50. Deluxe boxed edition with The Northern Voyages, $35.00.

A FEATURED ALTERNATE OF Tl IE BOOK-OF-THE-MONT 1 1 CLUB OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 200 Madison Avenue. New York, N.t 10O16 Want riit Cniistmn? Will Ml. Linda Sccull lei cm FREE Christmas catalogue amtilil solutions 10 youi tougnesi gill problems. hostage to the habits of rerunning the dead past in the cause of waking from the dream." The book takes its content and part of its form from the living archetypes of our culture: movies rerun in local theatres and on TV screens every night. A movie critic for Partisan Review, Baumbach has written his best fiction in this first effort for The Collective.

B. II. Friedman's Museum and Peter Speilberg's Twiddledum Twaddledum accompany Baumbach's novel from the Collective this Fall. Friedman's is a snappy novel of manners in the world of art. Speilberg's curiously titled novel makes it two ways at once, as a traditional developmental novel whose style is as compelling as its action.

There are about 20 members of The Fiction Collective, and all are working on novels. Raymond Federman and Ronald published novels last year with Swallow Press, have finished sequels to their earlier work. Other Collcctivists include Jerome Charyn, Leslie Epstein, Jack Gelber, Steve Katz, Walter Abish, and Mark Mirsky. All are established novelists, but as with the Collective's first three selections, they cover the wide range of writing today. Novelists outside the Collective have respect for its goals, and no one believes it could do any worse than the larger publishers.

Jerzy Kosinski, a National Book Award winner and his own agent in negotiations with New York publ ishing houses, regrets the industry's failure to keep pace with the times. "Today I could have a conversation with Balzac," Kosinski insists, "and as long as we stayed on the subject of publishing, there would be no historical confusion between us." Clarence Major, who has done novels with semi-underground presses and Black Lit houses, will send his next work, Reflex and Bone Structure, to the Collective, because he wants "to do something really revolutionary in publishing." Five days after its first publication date, The Fiction Collective can be called a success. The credit so far goes to the enormous work load carried by the Collective members, but once in operation profits will provide for a clerical and production staff. At that point the writers' efforts will be reduced to editing each other's works, producing an annual anthology, Statements, and of course writing novels. The climate for doing that is now healthier than it's -beenrfnf gOy Reruns By Jonathan Baumbach Fiction Collective, 169 pages, cloth $7.95, peper Twiddledum Twaddledum By Peter Spielberg Fiction Collective, 196 pages, Cloth $7.95, paper $3.95 Museum By B.H.

Friedman Fiction Collective, 156 rages, cloth $7.95, paper $3.95 Reviewed by Jerome Klinkcwitz It started when Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post Iclded a decade ago, and it got worse when some of the survivors, including Holiday and Harper's Bazaar, stopped buying fiction. Suddenly you could no longer do what Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (and lots cf others) did in the 1950s walk of yoiir job and become a full-time fiction writer. Semiprofessionals in search of a few extra bucks no longer had an easy market. The life of fiction had received its first bad prognosis.

Even the pros were hurt. The economy was affecting book publishers too, and fiction was the first casualty. Novels just did not fit the requirements of mass marketing, which had boosted sales and reduced prices of everything from LP records to frozen pizza. Novels don't sell in great numbers; first novels don't sell at all. In short, a novel is a product not designed for the 1970s.

In order to remedy this lamentable situation a group of young novelists have recently formed The Fiction Collective, by means of which they will publish their own work. Their spokesman is Jonathan Baumbach, a Brooklyn College professor who travelled the commercial route in the 1960s (stories in Esquire, novels from Random House and Harper Row) but who stands to fare much better now that he is in control of his own work. Commercial publishers aren't interested in serious fiction," Baumbach says, non-realistic fiction," the kind that most needs selective distribution and long shelf life. Printing a book is only the first hurdle; keeping it in print is another. "Books disappear as effectively these days as works by deviationists in Russia," claims Ronald Sukenick, an active member of The Fiction Collective.

His novel Up was selling 5,000 copies a year, not enough to suit its Jerome Klinkowitz is the editor cf The Vonnegut Taylor Caldwe Jerzy Kosinski fee's that the publishing industry hasn't kept up with the times. commercial publisher. With four successful books to his credit Sukenick could have' tried again with a large publisher, but instead he chose to do his next novel with the Collective. The Fiction Collective plans to publish six titles each year, and all will be kept in print for the life of the organization, no matter how small the individual demand. The key to this insurance- is, of course, self-' financing.

But the costs are amazingly small, especially when ranked against all the time and effort a novelist may risk with a commercial house. Right now it takes $3,000 to produce a book with The Fiction Collective (anticipated grants may reduce that figure). This provides 500 hardcover and 1,500 paperback copies, far too small for a commercial publisher but just right for serious fiction in the 1970s. To recover the author's investment; each novel must sell 400 copies in hardcover and, 1,200 in paperback. After that, profits are divided equally between the writer and the Collective.

There are profits to divide already. Publication date for the Collective's first three novels was Oct. i5, and advance orders topped the 80 per cent solvency level: Library sales quickly exhausted the initial hardcover printing, and a unique system of personal subscriptions which brought eager readers all three novels in paperback the same time reviewers got their copies accounted for many of the rest. Then the new paperback arm of Book-of-the-Month Club placed a healthy order, making a second printing before publication a necessity. The first three novels of The Fiction Collective cover a wide range of styles.

Jonathan Baumbach's Reruns moves beyond the conventions of his earlier work and is a solid example of the fiction much in vogue with younger readers. Reruns is 33 scenes from the life of "your- guide and a. nowgives us ner mosr exrraorainary heroine-a woman fighting for her right to be fully human in the "man's worlcfof ancient Greece. Herself a woman of spectacular achievement in a latter day man's world, one of the world's most popular novelists has been able to write from the inside of her heroine's character in Glory and the Lightning. The result is a powerful novel that finds in the life of Aspasia courtesan and finally I confidant of Pericles of Athens- x.

a model for the timeless conflicts of all 11 lvbi 31 cL fBOW AND THE GHTNING $10.00 at all booksellers cIDQUDLEPAY Jit.