10 / CHRONICLESnPERSPECTIVEnLITERACY BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONnby Thomas FlemingnPublishers Weekly must be the most depressing magazinenpublished in the United States. Oh, there are others hkenEsquire that make us despair for the affluent numskulls whonswap life-styles as if they were wives, or The New Yorker thatnmakes us remember how really boring New York can be.nBut for the sick feeling in the stomach that threatensnparalysis, the feeling Augustine must have had as he begannthe Civitas Dei, you must try the premier magazine of thenbook publishing industry. From the full-page ads promotingn”A New Self-Help Profit Maker” by best-selling author L.nRon Hubbard, to news stories on Anna Porter’s acquisitionnof 51 percent of Doubleday Canada or the copublishingn4^ ”nfe^^i^Jna h D Q 0 ‘. n 0 {In0 n i; a li •.. o u u rnn i; n n ;• •; n q ^ onQ u c a D Li (•] r j I. ana ^; 0 [J !. :i DQ CI n tn•! 0 u ‘J o – r; a Q nnn 0 :;;:; on r.! r- n cnft’^^ll’J-^nnnplan of Basic Books and The New Republic, to interviewsnwith industry leaders (“retailers and publishers are movingnmore toward making nonbook products available for consumers”),nall the way to the back where we find names likenStephen King, Pat Conroy, Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel,nBill Cosby, Andy Rooney, Jim McMahon, Carol Burnett,nand Robert Schuller. What do they all have in common—napart from fame, fortune, and bad prose? They all haventop-15 hardcover best-sellers in the first week of 1987.nPlease do not misunderstand. Publishers Weekly is a solidntrade magazine. It can hardly be held responsible for whatngoes on in the literary marketplace, but many a writer andnreader glancing through its pages must have asked themselves,n”What is the point to universal literacy, if the novelnof the week is It and the nonfiction best-seller is ‘Dr.’ BillnCosby’s ruminations on fatherhood?” (By the way, ask Dr.nBill, next time you run into him, how he earned hisndegree.)nIf we turn from humble best-sellers to “PW’s Choice: ThenYear’s Best Books,” there is some improvement but notnmuch. Reynolds Price, Peter Taylor, and Mary Lee Settlenare all mentioned, but so is Margaret Atwood. The nonfictionncategory, oddly enough, displays a high degree ofnprofessional courtesy, with books on Ed Murrow, EmilynDickinson, and Hollywood screenwriters, to say nothing ofnGeorge Plimpton’s anthology of Paris Review interviews.nWriters at Work. It’s a tough choice between the lowbrownAndy Rooney and the middlebrow Ed Murrow, but onnbalance, the best-seller is less offensive.nThere is, to be sure, a place for popular fiction andnpopular history. Chesterton was not the only writer who hasnenjoyed “penny dreadfuls,” but ours cost something liken$22.95; and dreadful doesn’t begin to describe the moral,nintellectual, and artistic qualities of Ms. Steel or Rev.nSchuller. America is the land of opportunity where citizensnare free to choose, but increasingly readers of new books arenfree to choose between the sentimental garbage of soft-corensex gothics and the more pretentious garbage of FredericknBarthelme (not to be confused with Freddy Bartholomew)nand Philip Roth. Why?nThose who delight in conspiracy theories will point to theninterlocking directorates of American mass media. Howneasily executives and journalists shuttie back and forthnbetween highbrow magazines {The Atlantic), middlebrownpapers (the New York Times), and browless advertisingn