22 / CHRONICLESnOPINIONSnA Month of Woes by Henry Regneryn”Evening must usner usher nigni, night, ni, night urge the morrow,nmonth follow month lonth with woe, woe. and year wake year tonsorrow.”n—ShelleynThe Book of the Month: Sixty Yearsnof Books in American Life, editednby Al Silverman, Boston: Little,nBrown; $17.95.nThe Book-of-the-Month Club,nnow in its 60th year, is an Americannsuccess story in the grand mannern— its financial success demonstratednby listing on the New York StocknExchange and later acquisition bynTime, hic., its merchandising skill bynsome two million members, book buyersnall, in every part of the country.nDuring its first 20 years, the Club sentn’TOO million books into the nation’snhouseholds.” The 60-year total mustnbe a staggering figure.nThe founder of the Club, HarrynScherman, was born and grew up innPhiladelphia, but while still at thenWharton School for Business wasnlured to New York to work in annadvertising agency. His considerablentalent for writing copy for direct mailnand a successful book promotion orntwo led almost inevitably to the foundingnof his book club, to which his mostninnovative contribution, perhaps, wasnthe concept of a panel of judges withnestablished literary reputations, whonwere to select the books. As Schermannexplained it, “You had to set up somenkind of authority so that subscribersnwould feel that there was some reasonnfor buying a group of books.” In ancountry with relatively few bookstores,nreaders in the most out-of-the-waynplaces would be offered each monthnnnthe most significant or the best book asnchosen for them by a panel of literarynheavyweights. The first judges werenHenry Seidel Canby, Dorothy CanfieldnFisher, William Allen White,nHeywood Broun, and ChristophernMorley. John P. Marquand served forna time as did Gilbert Highet; the Clubnhas had 18 judges in its 60 years. Thenpresent members of the board are CliftonnFadiman, John K. Hutchens, WilfridnSheed, Mordecai Richler, DavidnWillis McCullough, and Gloria Norris.nAt first the Club offered a mainnselection each month and one alternate,nsometimes two; now it offers andozen new alternates each month andna backlist of 125 books. “Club members,”nMr. Silverman tells us, “thatnfamily of intelligent book readersngrown more intelligent and sophisticatednin their reading tastes over thenyears, now make their choices from anrich variety of possibilities.” ThenClub’s selections, however, do not indicatena generation of book readersn”grown more intelligent and sophisticatednover the years”; it appears to me,nin fact, that the selections of the Clubnas well as the reports describing thenselections show a distinct decline inntaste and literary standards.nThe Club’s 60 years of decline innliterary standards can be documentednby comparing the selections during thenfirst decades of the Club, and thenreports to its members, with those ofnthe recent past. Not every book chosennduring the first years of the Club isnlikely to survive as a classic or even tonbe long remembered, but a numbernhave already stood the test of timen— Koestler’s Darkness at Noon,nWaugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Orwell’snAnimal Farm, Solzhenitsyn’snThe Gulag Archipelago, Greene’s ThenHeart of the Matter—but more impressive,nin a way, than the selectionsnHenry Regnery is chairman ofnRegnery Gateway.n