The Magazine That Talks

"I've trapped men and events while they are still alive, and sheltered them from the passage of time." So said Claude Claude-Maxe in Paris last week, as he launched the first periodical in history to appeal more to the ear than to the eye. The first issue of his Sonorama, which he plans to publish monthly, has 16 pages of pictures and text bound in with six flexible-as-paper phonograph records on translucent plastic.

To get an earful, the Sonorama listener-reader merely folds back the issue on its plastic hinges, slips it on the turntable spindle through a ready-made hole in the center of the magazine. Wide-ranging and middle-browed, the first issue opens with a pretentious foreword ("In the beginning was the word"), plods through some humdrum popular singing, purrs with the coquetry of Cinemorsel Brigitte Bardot as she chats about Boy Friend Sacha Distel ("I'm at the end of the world with Sacha"). Sonorama comes close to justifying Editor Claude-Maxe's lofty claims with two superb records of last summer's drama, when France wobbled between chaos and revolution: General Jacques Massu hoarsely bellowing defiance from an Algerian balcony; rioters clashing on the Champs Elysees; De Gaulle solemnly telling a press conference that he wili serve, and later singing La Marseillaise in his booming, resonant voice.

Editor Claude-Maxe, 45, a longtime peddler of ideas to newspapers, radio stations and ad agencies, will sell the magazine at newsstands (price: $1.20) instead of record shops, claims each record will play up to 1,000 times. "After years of selling ideas to others," he said, "I've finally sold one to myself."

As Parisians began to give Sonorama a whirl, Claude-Maxe was sure he had sold himself a good idea. He confidently printed 60,000 copies of the first issue, saw 20,000 snapped off the stands in four days, ordered another 40,000. Next month he plans to print 150,000 (with scenes and recordings from the life of Pope Pius XII), and he thinks he can hear a circulation of 300,000.

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