The Beast In Us

The hottest bestseller of 1949 runs to less than 1,000 words and sells for an even dollar. White Collar Zoo is a collection of 73 brightly captioned pictures illustrating a well-known truth: that the posturings and expressions of any group of human beings and those of an animal farm are obviously and sometimes hilariously interchangeable. White Collar's success can be traced to the shock of recognition.

Author Clare Barnes Jr., art director for the big Manhattan advertising agency of Benton & Bowles, got his idea while looking through a batch of animal photographs for an ad campaign last summer. In his search he was repeatedly reminded of folks around the office. Once he got the Zoo idea, he looked at thousands of zoological portraits before he tackled Doubleday with a choice lot. Enthusiastic but careful, the publisher tried it out in a real white-collar city, insurance capital Hartford, Conn., where Zoo went like animal crackers during a kindergarten recess. Published on July 7, it hit the bestseller lists in two weeks, headed them in two months and has stayed firmly on top ever since. Last week, with over 260,000 copies sold, it was moving over the counters at a 10,000-a-week clip.

Stacked beside it last week was Author Barnes's Home Sweet Zoo, a hasty effort to cash in on a good thing with more of the same. Just as obvious and just as funny as White Collar, Home Sweet Zoo has an even larger potential audience: the husbands and wives of the nation who have been stuck by the thorns of domestic irritation. Confident Author Barnes, who blandly assumes that White Collar will go over 500,000, thinks that Home ought to do just as well. Hopeful, but aware that the hottest fads have a saturation point, Publishers Doubleday have ordered a mere 100,000.

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