Volume 32, Number 6 · April 11, 1985
Working in the Dark
By Al Alvarez
The Anatomy Lesson
by Philip Roth
Ballantine, 240 pp., $3.95 (paper)
God Knows
by Joseph Heller
Knopf, 353 pp., $16.95
Tough Guys Don't Dance
by Norman Mailer
Random House, 229 pp., $16.95
Henry James said that no one could survive being an American success, and that was back in the age of innocence before they invented the book tour. James hadn't been shuttled around the country from one broadcasting station to the next or lain on a bed in Washington, DC, and been interviewed, live, by a disc jockey in Washington State. The tribulations involved in achieving modern American literary success have grown in direct proportion to the publishers' anxiety about protecting their investments. The better known the author, the larger the advance he commands, and the more frantic the promotion he is subjected to. Yet at the end, if a book sells 50,000 copies and edges onto the best-seller list, its author can console himself only with the thought that, although he may have been seen and heard by millions, he has been read, at best, by an average of one thousand people in each state of the Union.
Review, 4275 words
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