Lennon Drawings and Prose

“Skywriting by Word of Mouth,” a collection of never-before-published short works and drawings by the late John Lennon, will be published by Harper & Row on what would have been the former Beatle’s 46th birthday, Oct. 9. Much of the work, including the famous “Ballad of John and Yoko,” dates from Lennon’s “househusband” period after his son Sean was born in 1975. Lennon withdrew from public life at that time and was preparing to re-emerge when he was shot to death outside his apartment at the Dakota in December, 1980. For a long time, widow Yoko Ono refused to allow publication of the drawings and short prose pieces, but later she clearly had a change of heart. Lennon’s two earlier works, “In His Own Write” and “A Spaniard in the Works,” sold 330,000 copies in hardcover in this country. With an afterword by Yoko Ono, Harper & Row will print an initial run of 50,000 copies of “Skywriting.” Said company spokesperson Lisa Fillman: “I think he represents, to a lot of people, a whole generation.”

A JOURNALIST’S PROGRESS: Former Wall Street Journal reporter and Newsweek senior writer Allan Mayer has been named executive editor at Arbor House. Mayer also briefly tried his hand at Hollywood, working as a writer/producer, but found “the truth of the old cliche, that the movie business is not so much about making movies as it is about making deals.” Since joining Arbor House, Allan has acquired, among other works, “The End of the Dream,” by Robert Holtz (about the space shuttle Challenger and alleged mismanagement at NASA), and “Bad News at Black Rock,” Peter McCabe’s inside story of the decline at CBS News.

MEMO FROM MERCURY: Until very recently, there was no relationship at all--save a coincidence of names--between Mercury Theater and Mercury House. The former was founded by Orson Welles and John Huston in 1937, with Joseph Cotten among the actors. The latter is a new publisher that came out with its second season of books Sept. 15. Next April, however, a Mercury/Mercury marriage of sorts will be consummated, as it were, with the publication of Cotten’s memoirs, “Orson and Me.”

CENSORSHIP BUSTERS: As part of an anti-censorship-awareness campaign, Dell Publishing Co. Inc. has produced and is distributing anti-censorship bumper stickers (“Don’t Let Others Choose What You Can Read”) and decals. The material is being sent to retailers, periodical wholesalers, trade publications, distributors and their publishers. Comments Dell President William A. Lindsay: “Preserving the freedom to read, and all First Amendment rights, is essential to our business and to the nation as a whole.”

YOUTH MARKET: Book-of-the-Month Club has launched a children’s book series, Start Smart Books, geared from baby level to pre-adolescents.

PROBING QUESTIONS: Why are there so many species of beetles (more than 300,000)? From David Quammen, author of “Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature” (part of Dell’s new Laurel Trade Paperback line), this response: “I don’t know. I don’t know anyone who knows. A theologian one asked a biologist what inferences one could draw, from a study of the created world, as to the nature of its Creator. The biologist answered, ‘An inordinate fondness for beetles.’ ”

ROYAL ROUNDUP: And now, from former Royal Family butler Peter Russell, author with journalist Paul James of the forthcoming “At Home With the Royal Family” (out next February from Harper & Row), proof positive that the reigning monarch does have a sense of humor. It is well known, Russell reports, that many homosexuals are hired to work at Buckingham Palace. Clearly cognizant of and not particularly concerned by this fact, Queen Elizabeth was heard to remark, “Would one of you queens get this old queen a gin and tonic?”

HOUSE SWARMING: Mega-bestseller Barbara Taylor Bradford (“A Woman of Substance,” “Voice of the Heart,” “Hold the Dream,” “Act of Will”) has moved to Random House, where a three-novel deal has been negotiated by agent Morton L. Janklow. Ballantine Books will publish paperbacks of the new Bradford books. More than 12 million copies of “A Woman of Substance” are now in print worldwide.

PULL OUT THE POPCORN: Jonathan Kellerman’s best-selling crime mystery novel, “When the Bough Breaks,” is being made into an NBC movie by Taft Entertainment in association with TDF Productions. The book won this year’s Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

MAZEL TOV: Scholars and computer scientists at Columbia University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are nearing completion of volumes 5 and 6 in a proposed 12-volume edition of “The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language.” The work, parallel in the view of Yiddish Prof. Marvin I. Herzog of Columbia to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the first comprehensive, scholarly dictionary of the language spoken by millions of Ashkenazic Jews for nearly 1,000 years. Herzog calls the project “a kind of national memory, containing the totality of the language through history and from region to region.” Yiddish is a fusion of Germanic, Hebrew and Aramic, Romance and Slavic languages. Written in a modified Hebrew alphabet, it is a first language for about 4 million Ashkenazic Jews around the world. The first four volumes have been published independently and are distributed by the Magnes Press of Jerusalem.

STATE OF GOLD: In establishing its first Distinguished Writer-in-Residence program this fall, Baruch College of the City University of New York first announced that it would seek “a major writer whose work showed deep understanding of urban life.” Next, the school took the decidedly un-New York step of looking beyond the banks of the Hudson to find such a person. In fact, the school gazed all the way to San Francisco, where Herbert Gold was selected for the honor. Praised by CUNY liberal arts dean Martin Stevens as “a major author in the Jewish tradition,” Gold is the author, most recently, of the best-selling “A Girl of Forty” (Donald I. Fine). Gold has recently completed a reporting stint in Haiti.

REMEMBRANCES: Random House will publish the memoirs of Roy Cohn. The controversial attorney, disbarred earlier this year, had been working on the project with journalist Sidney Zion before he died in August.

THE (NEW) LINEUP: Ballantine/Del Rey/Fawcett has joined with Cloverdale Press Inc. to form Ivy Books, marking the first time a publisher and packager have shared editorial responsibility for an imprint. The first two Ivy books will be published in February, 1987. By June of that year, Ivy expects to have a full complement of 10 titles per month. Among Ivy’s lead titles for the spring are best-sellers “Home Front,” by Patti Davis, and “Charles & Diana, by Ralph Martin.

TV TIE-IN: On the literacy front, NBC has joined forces with the Library of Congress for a program called “Books Make a Difference.” The series of public service spots about the joys of reading will be shown on NBC owned-and-affiliated stations, featuring stars from shows like “Cheers,” “The Cosby Show,” “Family Ties,” “Valerie,” “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere” and “Today.” Spanish-language announcements will be presented by Edward Olmas and Saundra Santiago of “Miami Vice.”

THE VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM: Celebrated children’s writers Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff will spend this academic year as visiting professors in the school of education at the City University of New York’s Queens College. Noted for their emphasis on “real” stories for children, the pair (married, and living in Yellow Springs, Ohio) will teach children’s literature and poetry.

THE SEX LIFE OF THE VATICAN: Gordon Thomas’ study of sexual attitudes and behavior within the Catholic church has apparently prompted an investigation on the part of the Vatican to discover the identity of the priests who provided social historian Thomas with his data. The move follows the recent Vatican order to Los Angeles Jesuit priest Father Thomas Sweeney to destroy his research records into sexual attitudes among the American clergy. Rather than comply with the Vatican ruling, Father Sweeney resigned in August. His own findings, subsequently published, strikingly confirm the research of Gordon Thomas. Thomas’ three-year study of 175 men and women in religious life (published by Little, Brown under the title “Desire and Denial”) found that every one of his subjects had experienced “sexual difficulties,” and that each was “driven to respond like any other normal person.” Additionally, Thomas found that 40% of the seminarians he interviewed admitted to “strong suicidal impulses” because they were unable to cope with denying their sexual urges. Said Thomas, from his home in Ireland: “The matter is assuming the proportions of a witch hunt.”

SON OF ‘FATHERHOOD’: Having hogged the No. 1 spot on national best-seller lists since “Fatherhood” was published last May, Bill Cosby and Doubleday have decided to go on to other subjects. Cosby says his next book, scheduled for publication as a Dolphin hardcover in the fall of 1987, will be about “what happens as we get older--what happens to the body and mind, including, among other things, the battle of the bulge and the loss of memory.” As with “Fatherhood,” the new book will feature what Doubleday calls the “universal appeal” of vignettes and anecdotes based on Cosby’s own experiences, so much so that the publisher is banking on a first printing of “well over 1 million.”

AND FATHER AND SON: Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy has collaborated with his 16-year-old son Brendan to produce a book for young readers, “Charlie Malarkey and the Belly Button Machine” (Atlantic Monthly Press). Illustrations are by Glen Baxter.

THE COLOR OF SUCCESS: Touted widely as “another ‘Color Purple,’ ” Sherley Anne Williams’ “Dessa Rose” (William Morrow) was already in its third printing within one month of publication. Paperback rights to the San Diego novelist’s first book have been sold to Berkley for $100,000, reports Williams’ agent, Sandra Dijkstra.

NO REGRETS: Les Brown provided the music and Red Buttons the comic monologue as Norman Lear assembled several hundred friends under a Brentwood big top to celebrate Sally Quinn, author of “Regrets Only” (Simon & Schuster) and husband Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post. “Was that $600,000, Sally?” Buttons asked, alluding to paperback sales made the day of the bash. Actually, informed sources report, the sex-and-politics bestseller brought a little more than that.

LIVE AND ON VIDEO: Once again, author Steve Shagan will conduct a live satellite press tour, this time promoting his newest book (see review, Page 4), “Vendetta” (William Morrow). The electronic publicity will be handled by On the Scene Productions of Los Angeles.

NOTES FROM THE GALAXY: Now that publisher Rena Wolner has declared that “science fiction and fantasy are a priority here at Avon,” the publisher has contracted with 1) Piers Anthony for five new books, 2) Arthur C. Clarke for a series of six science fiction adventures, and 3) Joe Haldeman for a futuristic thriller and a “novel of immortality.”

CITIZEN COHN: That’s the working title of Nicholas von Hoffman’s biography of the controversial lawyer, due out from Doubleday in 1988. The rights to Cohn’s autobiography are held by Random House, but no decision about publication of that book has been reached. The controversial disbarred attorney, who died in August of this year, had been working on the project with journalist Sidney Zion.

IMPRINTSMANSHIP: Hardcover and paperback books in the areas of business, personal finance, contemporary affairs, biography, reference and languages will be published by Knight-Ridder Press, a new imprint from HP Books, the book publishing subsidiary of Knight-Ridder Inc. The line will be launched in February with eight titles, with an additional 10 titles scheduled for publication in the remainder of 1987.

COMMANDOS OF LITERATURE: Responding to the popularity of box-office stars like Indiana Jones, Rambo, Conan, Mad Max, the Terminator and Dirty Harry, Avon has launched a new men’s adventure series called “Kill-squad,” by Frank Garrett, and “Chance,” a new Western series by Clay Tanner. The Killsquad is a cheery bunch of six of death row’s most hardened criminals, “plucked from the brink of execution and molded into the most lethal killing machine the world has ever seen.” Their exploits will be unveiled in four installments. Chance, by contrast, is “a cool-headed, hot-blooded winner.” His story also will be told in four novels.

SADDLE UP: Western Writers of America Inc. is sponsoring its 34th annual Spur Awards Competition to recognize outstanding writing on the American West. Entries for best Western novel, historical novel, nonfiction, juvenile, short subject, cover art, motion picture script and television script must be submitted by Dec. 31. The winner earns $500 and something called the Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award. Contest rules and entry forms are available from Preston Lewis, 1919 67th St., Lubbock, Tex. 79412.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR CONSTITUTION: The Bicentennial of that document merited its very own book fair in Philadelphia Sept. 17, the actual 199th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. The event showcased books and publications relating to the Constitution.

BETTER LIVING THROUGH HURRICANES: Gazing out his window at a giant storm while on vacation in the West Indies, artist Barry Moser became convinced that what he was really seeing was a disembodied head in the eye of the storm. “The Wizard of Oz!,” thought Moser, and soon he was busy creating the 62 wood engravings that illustrate the University of California Press’ new Pennyroyal edition of L. Frank Baum’s classic.

THE RACE IS ON: Bantam and Ballantine finished in a dead heat in 1985 in the race to be the largest mass market publisher. For fiscal 1986, Bantam showed mass market sales between $200 million and $203 million. Sales for 1985 for Ballantine/Del Rey/Fawcett were estimated at $201.3 million. Ballantine had 45 paperbacks on the New York Times bestseller list, totaling 294 weeks that those books were listed. Bantam’s 22 books on the list totaled 143 book weeks.