The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 605

Fiction Collective Bucks a Trend BY MURRAH GATTIS Reruns by Jonathan Baum-bach; Museum by B. Friedman; Twiddledum, Twaddledum by Peter Spielberg (George Brazi. ler. $7.95 Cloth; $3.95 paper) Social Darwinists assert that it is "human: nature" to take advan-. tage of another person.

But there is a small, tough-minded minority' who embrace the concept that loving and the field of publishing. It was founded, the flyer says, "by a group of novelists for the protection of an endangered species innovative, quality fiction." The first three novels issued by Fiction Collective are Baumbach's "Reruns," Friedman's "Museum" and Spielberg's "Twiddledum, Twaddledum." Friedman's novel fol sharing develop desirable virtues, that if. the meek don't inherit the earth perhaps they should. I Members of this latter group often form cooperatives, which by definition are forms of business organization set up to provide a service for patron-owners rather than to make a profit. Fiction Collective, the latest co-op venture, is in (BOZCa CM A delightful new best seller from the author of Red Sky At Morning Or are you just "being nice" and ruining your own? Now learn how to defend yourself from their hidden aggressions and how to live constructively with your own natural anger.

mCIIARD BRADFORD D) FAIRL elite, a young man with a distinctive Skane nose, etc Friedman, whose novel "Whispers" was nominated for a National Book Award, writes skillfully about the inability of young Skane to love deeply and permanently, he. shows Skane's strength, too, in his ability to keep his father's dreams about the museum alive. Baumbach's "Reruns" is a comic novel about an iridescent character who is known variously as Jack, Kid, Bud, Ace, Honcho and Sweetheart. The hero lives through a series of nightmarish experiences, all mixtures of joy that turn to pain. An example of Baumbach's grim humon His hero is filming a scene at Carmel.

In a dream-like sequence Molly, Jack's girlfriend at the moment, is "abducted" by some stranger in a Mercedes. Jack gives chase in his Volvo. Wiener, Jack's collaborator, films the chase. Just as the Mercedes moves to pass a truck it meets a car coming the other way. Wiener films Jack's "idiot terror" and calls the sequence "one of the 10 greatest interrupted chase scenes ever filmed between Carmel and Big Sur." When Jack asks him how the Mercedes avoided colliding with the oncoming car, Wiener replies: "Lucky for them we ran out of film." writes a kind of comedy that is a funny view of hell." "Twiddledum.

Twaddledum" is also a comic novel, but it is half serious. It concerns the search for self-under standing by Paul, who discovers from birth, when his twin brother dies, that opposites are identical and irrecon- cilable. Paul discovers that hate and love, pleasure and pain, fear and courage are veneers hiding a reality that is pure fiction. The world, in short, is schizoid. Told alternately in the first person and the third, the novel begins in Vienna, details the experiences of the child and adolescent, then moves on to New York where Paul barely survives a raw, neurotic existence.

Sustaining him is his affair with Lola, a prostitute. This relationship is shattered by Lola's new lover, an officer turned businessman. Stomping the floor with his boot, the new suitor force.s Lola to give Paul the boot in a chapter entitled "The Boot" Cooperative publishing, which has enjoyed some success in Sweden, is. dedicated to keeping the novel as an art form alive for a period longer than commercial houses can afford to. Fiction Collective plans to publish six to 10.

books annually, in both cloth and paper simul-taneously. All titles will remain in print for the life of the collective. Forthcoming books are planned by such Writers as Russell Banks, Jerome Charyn, Leslie Epstein, Raymond Feder-man, Jack Gelber, Steve Katz, Mark Mirsky and Ronald Sukenick. The collective also plans to issue Statements, an anthology of new short fiction. Books VV Pocket At lows the traditional form: A love story of the late '60s and early '70s between the son of a.

museum's founder and two women, a painter and' an art historian, set against the background of institutional contentions. Emerson Skane III, 11 years out of college, is the product of all the good things flowing from Skane Industries, the Skane Foundation, and the Museum of Living Art, which he must direct. The women in Em's life are Leslie, his older married sister; Mrs. Hel--en Johnson (his late father's housekeeper who shared the Skane inheritance); B. B.

Ryan, an artist at the museum; and Sarah Seeley, "executive secretary" on the museum committee who is completing her doctorate as an art historian. And, finally, Em's late mother, whom he never really knew but whose influence has left its mark on him as an aristocrat, a member of the I fill SKI I I -This Week at- 25 OFF ANY BEST SELLER or POPULAR BOOK Also-Art Cook Boolu, Plant, etc. Send for price list end order form The Best Seller 131 8. Beverly Dr. B.H, Cal.

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