The Better Things

NEW WORLD WRITING (315 pp.)--/Vev/ American Library (50^).

Ever since paperback reprints began to flood the drugstores a decade ago, critics have solemnly speculated on what they would do to Literature. Would they spread a cloud of trash over the country? Or bring good reading to millions who rarely buy a book with hard covers?

They have done both. New American Library, probably the largest of the reprint houses, has published 11 million copies of Mickey Spillane's sexy drivel--and also reprinted, in more modest editions, the Odyssey and Crime and Punishment.

Last year, in a fit of literary responsibility, New American Library decided to bring out periodic anthologies of serious work by gifted but little-known new writers. New World Writing, the first result of this decision, contains 15 pieces of fiction, a dozen poems and half a dozen critical articles. The selections are devotedly serious, they reflect solid craftsmanship, they are only rarely arresting.

Perhaps the trouble is editorial caution. Though its emphasis is supposed to be on new talent, New World Writing sticks to such well-established figures as Tennessee Williams, Thomas Merton and Christopher Isherwood. Moreover, the idea seems to have been to pick the most sedate examples of advance-guard writing that could be found. The result is that, while highbrow esoterica is avoided, so is highbrow boldness. Only one piece is downright bad: Tennessee Williams' tasteless closet drama about D. H. Lawrence. The rest read comfortably enough, but seldom sparkle.

Editor Arabel Porter's prize catch is a chapter from an unfinished novel by Michael Seide. a Brooklyn story writer with a rare feeling for the depression years. Some other standout pieces: a story about an Italian P.W. in a U.S. hospital, by Giuseppe (The Brigand) Berto; a grisly novelette about a tubercular who marries to escape a domineering mama, by the 21-year-old French prodigy, Jean-Baptiste Rossi; a lively critical comparison of Mickey Spillane and Georges Simenon by Charles Rolo. If half the 110,000 copies of New World Writing are sold, the publishers will break even. Apparently, they are optimistic, for another issue is scheduled for fall. The idea is a good one; with a little more dare,, the second collection should be better.

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