OPINIONSrnVersailles-on-Hudsonrnby Chilton Williamson, Jr.rn”Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough of literature.”rn—R.W. EmersonrnMy Silk Purse and Yours: ThernPublishing Scene and AmericanrnLiterary Artrnby George GarrettrnColumbia: University of MissourirnPress; 316 pp., $29.95rnThe Sorrows of Fat City: A Selectionrnof Literary Essays and Reviewsrnby George P. GarrettrnColumbia: University of SouthrnCarolina Press; 343 pp., $34.95rnAcritic who tries to stay abreast ofrnthe literature of his time, in anyrntime, deserves respect as well as sympathyrnfrom less heroic readers content tornpick and choose from among the delugernof titles that sends one literary year afterrnthe next spinning away down the ceaselessrncascading indiscriminate flood. “1rnread all the time, then,” George Garrettrnsays of himself as a boy,rnChilton Williamson, jr. is senior editorrnfor books at Ghronicles.rnand 1 still do. And after I becamerna teacher and then later a certifiedrn(by finally being published) writer,rn1 did not put awav childishrnthings, but just added to them. Irnhave for thirty-some years judgedrncountless contests and grant applicationsrnand prizes. And I havernedited poetry and fiction, too, forrnvarious magazines and presses.rnAnd I have reviewed books all therntime, individually and in clustersrnfor chronicle reviews and inrnmountainous caches, over the lastrnfew years, for the annual “Year inrnFiction” essay for the Dictionaryrnof Literary Biography Yearbookrnwhere in ten or twelve thousandrnwords I try to do my best to reportrnon a calendar year’s worth ofrnAmerican fiction. At this time 1rnam still doing at least some of allrnof it, and 1 think it would be perfectlyrnsafe to say that I read morernfiction, at all stages of its development,rnthan anybody else in thisrncountry. . . . And I am not a bonarnfide speed reader, cither [“ThernStar System,” My Silk Purse andrnYours].rnIn these two volumes alone, which mustrnaccount for a small fraction of his criticalrnproduction. Professor Garrett assesses atrnlength the merits and demerits of workrnby Norman Podhoretz, B. S. Johnson,rnFred Chappell, Mary Johnston, ShelbyrnFoote, James Jones, Reynolds Price,rnMadison Smartt Bell, Bobbie Ann Mason,rnJohn Barth, Hillary Masters, PaulrnFussell, David Slavitt, F. Scott Fitzgerald,rnJoyce Gary, James Gould Gozzens,rnJohn Ciardi, Robert Pcnn Warren, JohnrnGheever, Saul Bellow, Wright Morris,rnand William Faulkner, as well as byrnmany other writers in “short takes”—rnand considers also such vasty topics asrnthe star system in contemporary Americanrnletters, the publishing business andrnits effect on American literary art in thernlate 20th century, and the state ofrnSouthern literature in the present day.rnDoes the man never have any fun at all?rnYes he does, and an astonishingrnamount of it he seems to take from readingrnbooks. My almost sole reservationrn26/CHRONlCLESrnrnrn