doing in Vienna, Berlin, and London” (as SolotarofFwrites).nThe elements of that “desire and drive,” like so many innpublishing, are essentially paradoxical.nOn the one hand there is a need to shrink the Americannexperience and audience to the most manageable, localnlimits — “an important cultural role in New York.” On thenother, there is a sense of internationalism, of a very muchnlarger world, linked by some common interests and thenpower of great cities, more or less without regard to thencountryside (nations) surrounding and supporting them.nNeedless to say, the predominant point of view presented bynAmerican publishing houses is moderately, safely leftist,naggressively urban, and largely indifferent to most of thenmainstream political, social, religious, and regional concernsnof the country. Thus the relation of publisher to nationalnaudience becomes a model of old-fashioned colonialism, ofnAncient empire. Those at the imperial center of things neednnot concern themselves deeply with the wishes and hopes ofntheir audience, the far-flung others, that wider world fromnDisney World to Disneyland, unless and until there were tonbe some sort of significant revolt against the culturalnimperialism of New York, a revolt, alas, seemingly unlikelynbecause it is one of the sad goals of this particular audience,nthe audience for American “high” art and culture, to benthought to be deftly in touch with the latest trends andnmovements coming from the Big City. Thus, for instance,nAmerican regional theater, despite the talent of its artists andnthe support of its audiences, remains doggedly bush league,ndepending almost completely on New York for identity andncertification.nWe may be approaching that levelnof illiteracy in which the book,nitself, becomes a thing of magic.nMuch the same attitude applies to the more complexnworld of books. Since almost all the topics of nonfictionnbooks are in fact invented in New York publishing offices, itnfollows that most of the nonfiction we finally get in thenprovinces is less exemplary of what we might want or neednthan it is what they think we should receive and read. Innnonfiction, then, our choices are somewhat limited, morenapt to be more purely regional, that region being New YorknCity, in political, social, cultural assumptions, than to reflectnthe wider and deeper national concerns. Vietnam is a case innpoint. Will we ever be permitted to read a reasonablyn”objective” account of that war, those times? Not likely. Sonmuch for the free-flowing currency of ideas.nWith “images,” the presented worlds of fiction andnpoetry, the situation is somewhat different. With the exceptionsnof certain best-sellers, none of these things arenespecially profitable to anybody. Nobody really tries to losenmoney on these ventures in literature (except, occasionally,nfor tax scams); but their expectations are exceedinglynmodest. What follows is that, in terms of literary fiction andnpoetry, the forces of the marketplace (thus ultimately of thenhopes and wishes of readers) are not especially influential.nPublishers are more like high-placed, old-fashioned patronsn14/CHRONICLESnnn(albeit with somebody else’s money) than midwives to thesenarts. It becomes more and more a matter of personalnselection of materials and support on the part of editors whonexercise their power (which is real, since it has so few limits)nmore out of strictly subjective criteria and self-interest thannout of any serious standards of value or even of good taste.nAs Seymour Lawrence says (in Reasons to Believe): “Peoplenoften ask me how I choose the authors, and I’ll say that it’snvery hard to explain. Often I don’t explain it. I’ll say that it’snan intuitive thing.” Not exactiy the words of a bornnsalesman. Somewhat more combative is the position ofnGordon Lish, as described in Reasons to Believe — “Lishncouldn’t care less whether he is loved or hated, as long as hencan act as a catalyst in the development of important artists.”nFor those who might be mildly skeptical, there is thendemonstrably judicious integrity of Tom Jenks. “I can’tn.imagine that there is any neglected contemporary fiction atnthis point,” he writes. “I don’t think there’s a lot that slipsnthrough the cracks.” The claim is, then, that (boy scout’snhonor) our publishers are giving us the best and mostnrepresentative material that comes in to them. Whether younchoose to believe that or not will depend on the extent ofnyour experience of placing your trust and faith in the handsnof others. To at least some among us, it seems that many ofnthe new generation of editors are asking for the kind ofnrespect usually afforded only to physicians, and specialists atnthat. The significance of the predominanfly personal approachnto the publication of fiction and poetry is that theseneditors, first of all, are concerned with shaping the careers ofnwriters they like socially as well as professionally. Networkingn(as they say) is inevitable. Also inevitable, in anbusiness based on personal commitments, is the doublynemphatic need to maintain the status quo they havenestablished. Thus what should be an age of discoverynbecomes, in fact, a time of stasis, of the wagon train tightlyncircled against the yowling of nameless savages on thenoutside.nBut there are some forces working against the firm trendsnof contemporary American publishing. Some are internal.nThe very size of the big New York publishers makesnthem wildly unwieldy and ineflicient, and burdens them,nand their books, with an implausible weight of exorbitantnoverhead. At their size it is harder and harder to turn a profitnwith anything even slightiy more demanding than the worksnof Bill Cosby or the meditations of Michael Jackson. Smallernpublishers can afford to take more chances and to locatenthemselves anywhere in America. Thanks to all that and, asnwell, to the latest technology, we seem to be poised at thenedge of a return to regional publishing in America for thenfirst time since the Civil War. Whatever else, regionalnpublishers will be closer to their actual market and thus tonthe free flow of ideas and images. For the two are intimatelynrelated. Meantime university presses, and small pressesngenerally, are coming forward with some of the mostninteresting and valuable books being published today innAmerica. Some measure of their success (and threat to thenpresent literary establishment) is to be found in the fact thatnthe highly politicized National Endowment for the Arts hasncut its modest support of many of these presses in order tonconsolidate the bulk of its money behind a few strictlyn