A History of Book Publishing in the United States. Vol. 4: The Great Change, 1940-1980 byJohn TebbelReview by: Mary BiggsThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Apr., 1982), pp. 182-184Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4307478 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheLibrary Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.141 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:51:10 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

182 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

(who all at one time or another praised and defended Burroughs), noted lawyers Joel Sprayregen and Edward deGrazia, Boston bookseller Theodore Mavrikos, and then-Massachusetts Attorney General (and later United States Senator) Edward Brooke-not to mention the shadowy and deeply troubled Burroughs himself.

The problem is that Goodman does not step back from all the details he cites to reflect on his subject. He moves laboriously through the case study without sufficient comment on his materials and without editing or ordering them enough to stress what is most important. He offers everything on what happened at this or that time, or on what this or that critic thought of the text, but not enough on the legal, literary, and cultural context of the case. Certainly Good- man includes some observations, but he leaves the reader too much on his own to sort the details out and to discover their significance.

There are a few smaller matters that deserve some attention. Several sentences are clumsily phrased or oddly punctuated, and some assertions are strained or gratuitous. In the middle of the book, Goodman includes a chapter called "Burroughs and the Writing of Naked Lunch," which is interesting but interrupts the account of the publication of the book and its legal problems. Finally, in the current controversy over the Moral Majority and the legislation of morality- and the distinct possibility of a more conservative federal judiciary-one might question Goodman's closing statement that the "experience of Naked Lunch . . . signals an end to the censorship of literature in the United States" (p. 243). The up-and-down history of censorship seems to warn against such confidence.

Carl S. Smith, Northwestern University

A History of Book Publishing in the United States. Vol. 4: The Great Change, 1940- 1980. By JOHN TEBBEL. New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1981. Pp. xi+830. ISBN 0-8352-0499-5.

This fourth volume of Tebbel's ambitious series (vol. 1 appeared in 1972, vol. 2 in 1975, and vol. 3 in 1978) covers an exciting and somewhat chaotic period characterized by the increase and expansion of scholary interests, rising college enrollments, proliferation of imprints and publications, rampant mergings and takeovers in the commercial sector, changes in copyright law, and dramatic technological advances which are only beginning to be exploited by the industry. Tebbel assures us that with this volume, his remarkable undertaking is completed (p. ix), though I imagine that some doctoral student a decade or so hence may be tempted to resume it. Supposing, however, that he is correct and this book is the last of its kind, criticizing it seems beside the point, if not downright ungracious. At best, it is an attempt to lock the editorial office door after the project has been perpetrated. For the merits and faults of this book, like its fat blue homely appearance, are virtually identical with those of its predecessors.

The first and predominant deficiency, from which most of the others origi- nate, is in Tebbel's choice of sources. Aside from personal knowledge gained through his experience in the industry during the period covered, he has relied heavily on Publishers Weekly ("a basic resource" [p. ix]), Saturday Review, and "the prime resource . . . that vast treasure, the vertical files of the R. R. Bowker Co. (actually the PW staff's reference files)" (p. x). He also acknowledges using the Melcher Library at Bowker. The result is lists of end notes heavily larded with citations to articles from PW and Saturday Review, to annual reports and in-house

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.141 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:51:10 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 183

organs, and to pieces clipped from newspapers and popular magazines. It is logical for a historian to use such sources, but not to stop with them. Equally a problem here is the manner in which they seem to have been used.

Though the book is organized as a unified historical narrative, a scissors and paste jar are at times almost palpable. Needless repetitions abound and Tebbel occasionally contradicts himself. This failure to assimilate source material is evident in the following examples: On page 309, we are told that Time magazine "invented" the word "nonbooks" in the late 1950s to describe salable books of trivial content such as those "written" by television celebrities and published by Bernard Geis; yet on page 455, Time is said to have applied the "nonbooks" label specifically to coffee-table picture books, though it "quickly became a part of the language" and was used pejoratively to describe all types of popular literature. A greater surprise is to learn from page 429 that Shoe String Press issued 58 titles in 1980-after having been assured on the preceding page that it issued only 50 that year.

Tebbel's reiterations are less serious than his factual inconsistencies, but ex- tremely irritating to the reviewer reading conscientiously from cover to cover-a thing which no one save reviewers and the author's intimates is likely to do. One example will suffice: on page 432, author-publisher Susan Schulz has "degrees in English and biology,"while on page 433, she has those degrees once again, as well as studies toward "a master's in cell physiology." Why these only vaguely relevant data about a minor figure are even included is a good question; their repeated appearance on successive pages is a product of indefensibly casual editing and possibly a very sloppy paste jar.

Alongside repetitions and contradictions are simple errors in fact. One can only guess how many. I caught a few without trying: for example, Eleanor Estes's Newbery-winning children's book is cited as Ginger Pie (a dessert?) rather than Ginger Pye (p. 477)-and, especially grievous to a Chicagoan perhaps, but inex- cusable in any case, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 is moved up to 1875 (p. 608), while a famous Chicago priest an(d sociologist is described merely as "the jour- nalistic writer Andrew Greeley" (p. 617). A reader unfamiliar with his name would think him a newspaper reporter. While it would be overwhelmingly difficult to expunge all errors from a book of this scope, such glaring and easily checked misstatements do detract seriously.

Still more aggravating are the missing facts, those necessary explanations and analyses not provided by Tebbel's superficial secondary sources. While their absence does not seem to trouble him, any reader genuinely interested in his subject will do a long series of double takes. Consider, for example, the following revelations, neither of which is explored further: "Determined [Productions, Inc.] became one of publishing's most rapid success stories, yet by 1980 it was no longer in existence" (p. 483); "Although the merger [of Allyn & Bacon with Prentice-Hall] brought some new energy and capital into the old firm, it was not a success froni Prentice-Hall's standpoint, for reasons that remain somewhat obscure. In spite of the fact that Allyn & Bacon was now able to get into the elementary field, which it had wanted to do for some time, and as a result greatly enlarged its prospects with the new reading series, Prentice-Hall spun off its acquisition after a short time" (p. 525). Statements like these, tossed into the void and left suspended there, have no place in historiography. Despite the title of his series, Tebbel has not written history; he has compiled data. There are few clear ideas in this book and little sense of historical movement, of trends, of a "great change." They are buried beneath layers of half-digested facts. For instance,

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.141 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:51:10 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

184 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

rather than a coherent discussion of mergers and an analysis of their effects, the reader is treated to tale after mind-dulling tale of individual mergings, and comes away knowing nothing new about their real significance in the publishing world. Interrupting the endless details are a few personal judgments, welcome because they break the monotony, but amounting to little more than unsubstan- tiated opinions, often on the subject of censorship (of which Tebbel disap- proves).

Before ending my recitation of complaints, I must note shortcomings in the handling of small and alternative presses, an area of special interest to me. Located in the "Design, Production and Manufacturing" section, the chapter on "Small Presses and Fine Editions" does not deal adequately with the literary, intellectual, or political motivations of many small presses, and indeed fails to distinguish between small private publishers interested primarily in artistic fine-printing and those wtih other purposes. The coverage in this chapter is exceedingly sketchy and eccentric. Except for a single page later on devoted to "Minority [that is, black and Hispanic] Publishing" (p. 730), Tebbel barely notes the rich if rather undisciplined world of alternative publishing, which has grown and flourished over the past three decades. When he does venture tentatively into this area, he is, again, not always in control either of the facts or of the organization of his data. For example, four pages before the "Minority Publish- ing" section, he devotes one sentence to Midwestern black publishing-a sen- tence that would never be found by readers with a special interest in that subject, since the book lacks a subject index. Worse, if they should find it, they would be misinformed. Tebbel implies that the well-known Third World Press and the Institute for Positive Education, "both of Chicago," are separate publishing houses; actually, the Press is owned by the Institute, which issues no books itself-and both are headed by renowned poet-activist Haki E. Madhubuti (for- merly Don L. Lee). The alternative press is a lively part of the publishing world, but it is not much reported in PW and apparently has no folder in the Bowker vertical files.

I have dwelt long on the weaknesses of this volume, yet it is competently written and has one great strength: the sheer mass of thoroughly name- and title-indexed information gathered between its covers. I will return to it fre- quently for identifications of people in the industry, for brief histories of houses, and to connect important titles with their imprints. Most use, I predict, will be of this nature.

Mary Biggs, University of Chicago

Bucherauktionen in Deutschland im 17. Jahrhundert. By HANS DIETER GEBAUER.

Bonner Beitrage zur Bibliotheks- und Bucherkunde, Band 28. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1981. Pp. 203. DM 48. ISBN 3-416-01557-6; ISSN 0068-0028.

Auctions and auctioneers conjure up mixed images of cool excitement, bidder apprehension, and occasional hucksterism. Plautus poked fun at them, Samuel Johnson and Ambrose Bierce both equated the auctioneer with the pickpocket,

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.141 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:51:10 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions