MANNERS APPEARING LITERATE

AN INTIMIDATING piece of mail arrived last month, addressed, “Dear Reader:

“If someone in your family wanted to read a good book now, at this very moment, what does your home library offer?” the letter asked. “A ragtag collection of college texts and fading best-sellers, or a superb selection of America’s greatest authors?”

This sales pitch, which sounds as though it were written by someone from Saturday Night Live, came from Time-Life, Inc. on behalf of the Library of America, a nonprofit publishing venture of the classics of American literature in a complete, hardbound uniform series. The library’s name is spread across a full-color close-up of the American flag and emblazoned with the cultural certification: “Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation.”

Accompanying the brochure is a letter from James Michener proclaiming that the purchase of the library’s forthcoming series of American classics is not only desirable, “it is intellectually obligatory.”

My intellect balks at being obligated to buy something. Other readers may also balk at this form of cultural intimidation, especially if they link Michener’s name to the “fading best-sellers” denounced in the brochure. The shame of this sales technique is that it tries to manipulae potential buyers with a pseudo-patriotic, literary totemism for a worthwhile and long overdue project that ought to work on its own merits.

For the sake of honesty, future publicity for the Library of America ought to be stamped with a disclaimer: “Warning: Dull Writing Also Included.” The buyer could then admit to himself that he is buying the series not only for the genuine masterpieces contained, but also to feel good about himself. He won’t be buying any more 19th-century American books. Nobody should actually have to read all the writing; just having it should be enough. There are limits to duty, even in a country founded on Puritan principles.

Nevertheless, the need for a permanent, inexpensive, and complete series of the major American authors has been evident for many years. No one gave it greater emphasis than the late dean of American literary criticism, Edmund Wilson. In an impassioned article for the New York Review of Books in 1968, Wilson denounced the elaborate, scholarly, and expensive editions of American authors in the Modern Language Association series, which was underwritten by the federal government and is taking decades to complete.

“If they (the professors and editors of the MLA editions) are so desirous of providing authentic texts to American and world readers, why don’t they release their work at a low price and right now?” Wilson complained.

Wilson’s impatience was aggravated by what then seemed a high price for a book -$10 for the scholarly edition of Their Wedding Journey by the 19th-century novelist of manners, William Dean How-ells. Wilson ridiculed the editors’ pedan-ticism, which included recording Howells’ techniques of hyphenation and spelling of “millionaire” (with two n’s). He protested the critical edition of Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, which was burdened with 89 pages of “Textual Introduction” and 143 pages of “Textual Notes.”

Instead of the MLA’s physically and mentally ponderous editions, Wilson called for inexpensive, easy-to-hold, hardbound editions of American writers, uncluttered by scholarly apparatus and printed on lightweight, non-fading, opaque paper like that used in Bibles. Wilson called, in short, for an American version of the French Pléiade editions of Gallimard. (Pléiade editions contain 800 to 1500 pages, often containing several works of an author in one volume. The books are small, easy to hold, and lie flat when opened.) Wilson was persuaded by friends in the publishing business that such a venture could only succeed with a government subsidy.

He died before a subsidy finally came through in 1979-$1.2 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities and $600,000 from the Ford Foundation – to create a nonprofit corporation, Literary Classics of the United States. The board of directors includes some of the most distinguished people in American literary studies, including Daniel Aaron of Harvard University as president and Jason Epstein of Random House as treasurer. The first installments of the grants have been made, and as the texts are published, they are being stored in a computer data bank so they will always be available. The plan is to keep the uniform series of books perpetually in print. Epstein estimated that approximately 60 volumes will be initially published. The texts will be based on cleaned-up versions of the MLA editions that Wilson disliked, and where the MLA editions are not available, the editing will be newly commissioned for speedy inclusion.

The new series has been celebrated in the New York Times Book Review by John Russell, who devoted much of his column praising the Pléiade editions and wondering, as Wilson did, how other countries manage to keep their major authors in print, while we have failed.

Even with foundation money, marketing the Literary Classics of the United States will be difficult, Epstein said. When Time-Life offered to test the waters for a subscription series for free, Literary Classics accepted. Perhaps nothing can be sold for what it truly is in this age of advertising, but the Literary Classics of the United States ought to have taken the chance and avoided this advertising hype. There, on a walnut table, a volume lies open, a thin ribbon marking the page. Next to it rests a fountain pen, an icon of the serious mind. A pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses are propped by the brass lamp that illuminates the scene. This is an age before Formica desk tops, ballpoint pens, and fluorescent lights. This is a dignified place for dignified people who have straightened out their lives and done right by their heritage. No more Sidney Sheldon, no more Louis L’Amour, no more James Michener. The reader, made to feel guilty for not owning the great books, is then relieved of his guilt for not owning them since many of them have been out of print or are only available in expensive hard-to-find editions.

The series is not sold simply as a good series of books, but as an investment “for enriching your own life, the life of your family, and the life of our nation.” The pitch is aimed not simply at readers of books, but at those who want to feel like readers of books. To own this handsome, complete set is to own an item of status – a totem. The totem proclaims membership in the clan, provides identity, and can be handed down to other members of the clan. The books will also be there just in case someone needs to know about the American literary tradition.

Just in case the unwitting reader of bestsellers plunges into the subscription that offers a new volume every two months, hoping to simply read straight through the American classics, he should be forewarned that the best of American literature is readily available in well-edited paperback editions. For example, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, exists in 19 available editions in the most recent edition of Books in Print. One of the best is the Bobbs-Merrill edition, with good illustrations of whaling boats and equipment. Similarly, many paperback editions exist of Thoreau’s Walden, Emerson’s major essays, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Hawthorne’s stories and major novels.

But Melville’s early novels are indeed difficult to find and are frequently out of print. Three of his first novels are being offered as the first volume of the Library’s series. Typee, Omoo, and Mardi are about Melville’s adventures jumping ship in the South Seas and living with the natives. They have a certain charm and made Melville a commercially successful author of “fading best-sellers” during his lifetime. But they make tough going for the reader who is looking either for a good read or who expects the symbolic complexity and high poetry of Moby Dick. Moby Dick marked the decline of Melville’s salability in his own lifetime, but today is recognized as a classic, worth a lifetime of study. His stones are wonderfully modern, but pity the unwary reader, who, out of Puritan discipline, attacks Pierre or, The Ambiguities, written in a fit of black despair and complicated irony.

America does have great literature, but it is limited to a few novels, stories, and poems that are readily available, and a great deal else that is interesting if the reader has a deeper sense of history and a longing for the heritage and ideas of America.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, currently available in nine different editions, was a best-seller in its time, but is more of a historical curiosity today as a book accused of starting the Civil War. Its characters are hackneyed and stereotyped. The Library of America will publish it along with two long-out-of-print novels the publicists have left unnamed. Presumably, they will not be The Ravages of a Carpet or Stories About Our Dogs.

A generation that knows James Fen-imore Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels through television or the movies may find the complete series of novels as ridiculous as Mark Twain found them.

“In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115,” Twain wrote. “It breaks the record.” But remember that Twain said he couldn’t read Jane Austen on salary, a judgment that won’t hold for many other readers.

As a form of devotion, subscribing to the Literary Classics of the United States is a bargain at $20 a volume, cheaper than most Pléiade editions in France. The price is bound to go up, and will certainly be higher in bookstores; and $120 a year is a harmless amount of money to spend compared to what the average family spends on, say, dog food or hair driers.

If you cannot afford the subscription, have no children, or lack friends who would be impressed by the handsome vol umes of this series, or if you are not even capable of impressing yourself with your own good taste, don’t feel bad. You can buy the essential works in paper and wear them into tatty, yellowing rags, and feel superior.