Bookworming

As I predicted in an earlier issue of Salient, the trial of Last Exit to Brooklyn in Britain last year has frightened many publishers who were set to bring Britain up-to-date with "fringe" American fiction.

Because most publishers now don't know exactly what can be expected, their decisions about what they publish are governed by mere expediency.

Of course, this means a cautious, conservative approach involving editing of "suspect" passages. Candy, coauthored by Terry Southern, long the most famous "underground" novel will be published with cuts. When I read it last year in a cheap version from Los Angeles, I found it highly enjoyable and very, very erotic. It is perhaps, the only successful send-up of "hard-core pornography".

Gore Vidal, author of many good novels and the screenplay of The Best Man, will have his new novel Myra Breckbidge toned down.

A new novelist, Barry Cole, was persuaded by his publishers, Methuen and Co., to rewrite extensive parts of A Run Across the Island. However, Cole has worked off his not surprising anger by rewriting the offending matter as self-parody.

Well-known for its outbursts of puritan outrage the book selling chain of W. H. Smith, as well as other booksellers, have refused to sell Paul Ableman's Vac. But publishers. Gollancz, not usually noted for setting the pace in literature, are not holding back.

Ableman's first novels were published in Paris by the Olympia Press. Most critics seem to agree that Vac is his best work to date. Watch for it before the Tribunal gets at it.

Those who read the small public notices in the papers will have noticed that the Comptroller of Customs has submitted a book of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings. Long considered an excellent cartoonist and sketcher, Beardsley has only just been given the treatment he deserves by the publishing trade. If the Tribunal axe these they will be adding a little more to their already not inconsiderable contribution to putting New Zealand well back behind the rest of the world in the literary arts.

The unrelenting monthly inundations of paperbacks in the bookshops still provide the only satisfactory way for students to enjoy cheap reading. It is no longer possible to categorise the different publishers into "good", "bad" and "indifferent". Penguin maintain their quality quota, although in recent months their lists are far from exciting. Most of the new Penguins are safe but not wholly stimulating.

Best so far this year (not in order of merit) are Charles Webb's The Graduate, a novel about an adolescent who rebels against his bourgeois upbringing, recently filmed by Mike Nichols; Mervyn Peake's gothic monstrosity Titus Groan (Modern Classics); Bruce Jay Friedman's A Mother's Kisses, and two novels by American Thomas Berger: Little Big Man and Reinhart in Love.

Coming shortly from Penguin are three more volumes in the New Writing series dealing with Australia, France and England. Christina Stead's long unavailable The Man Who Loved Children will be a welcome supplement to some of her other work which is in paperback from the enterprising Melbourne-based Sun Books.

Panther Books are noted for this colourfulness, although of late an increasing number are being submitted to the Indecent Publications Tribunal and thus delayed. Of those available don't miss William Burroughs' science-fiction phantasmagoria Nova Express which is rewarding if demanding. David Caute's Decline of the West received mixed reviews when first published, but it makes for a fascinating look at violence and torture.

Corgi, Mayflower and Pan are still vying for an increased share of the prestige market in fiction, although their books cater largely at the unsuspecting. Don't overlook them in your Drowsing: diligence can yield some rewarding results.

The New English Library is increasingly reflecting its American ownership. Latest and best is the revival of the magazine-book devoted to new writing. Under the title New American Review the two volumes so far contain much of interest. Fiction by writers like Philip Roth, John Barth and William Gass with essays on homosexual literature, drama and films are of generally high standard, despite catholicity, to please the middlebrows. Good value for $1.10.

If you can't afford too many paperbacks (and who can?) new fiction in hard-back form is generally available in the public library, although not without some trouble. Pick or the new books in alphabetical order by authors would include Burrough's The Soft Machine (if it isn't banned); Jean Genet's Funeral Rites; Mordecai Richler's Cocksure; Death Kit by Susan Sontag; Christian Stead's The Puzzleheaded Girl, and finally the three current bestsellers in America, William Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner, Couples by John Updike and Myra Beckinridge (in a bowdlerised version) by Gore Vidal.

—Nevil Gibson.