The Blockbusters : Few See Them as a Literary Circle, but They Make L.A. a Book Capital of Sorts

It’s not exactly the Bloomsbury group--London’s turn-of-the-century literary circle of Virginia Woolf and friends--and hardly the Lost Generation that Gertrude Stein hosted in the Paris of the ‘20s, but a circle of world-famous writers has quietly formed in Los Angeles.

And while they all have international reputations and seem to prefer one another’s company, as a group they’ve never attracted much attention--not even in their own celebrity-conscious city.

Literary lions may roar with laughter at the mention of their names, but millions of passionate fans say they’re the best storytellers around. And whatever their limits as stylists may be, they’ve mastered the business of producing books like nobody before them. They sell more copies, see more of their stories turned into movies and mini-series, and make more money while they’re at it, than a pack of lions all together.

Self-Described Entertainers

They are L.A’s other celebrities, not screen idols or rock stars but self-described entertainers who lead glamorous lives and write best-selling books with titles as familiar as pop songs. From Sheldon came “Windmills of the Gods,” from Collins “Hollywood Wives” and Krantz is the author of “Scruples.” Robbins wrote “The Carpetbaggers,” and Stone completed “The Agony and the Ecstasy” while Wallace penned “The Prize.”

No garrets or fifth-floor walk-ups for this group. They write their books in decorator digs from Beverly Hills to Brentwood. Some, like Collins, write to the sound of cool water splashing in the back-yard swimming pool. Others, like Wallace, work in an at-home office that resembles a small-town public library.

And at the end of the day they all have endless offers to “do” the night-time talk shows, dodge the paparazzi and bump into each other at A-list parties. It’s hardly the life of the struggling artist. “The lowly literary writer isn’t the nature of this town,” Wallace explains.

If as a group they have never really “made it,” some say it is because New York still holds the title as the center of the book business and Eastern publishers have a skewed view of the West. “Their attitude is that L.A. is a movie town, not a book town,” maintains Ed Victor, a London-based literary agent about to open an office here. “Los Angeles is a secret book city,” Victor believes. “New Yorkers don’t think about the fact that a lot of major commercial books come from here.”

Along with the biggest names on the city’s blockbuster list, Victor notes, there’s a healthy support group of locally based best-selling authors, some of whom critics regard with kindness. Among the names Victor mentions are Joseph Wambaugh of “The Onion Field” fame, Michael Crichton, best known for his chilling “The Andromeda Strain,” and Steven Shagan, who wrote “Save the Tiger.”

But many consider the core of the L.A. writers’ circle an embarrassment, not something to mention, let alone elevate to the status of a literary scene. “It’s not writing, it’s typing,” says Jack Shoemaker who quotes the famous barb by Truman Capote. Shoemaker co-founded North Point Press, an outlet for serious literature, near San Francisco.

He thinks it’s ridiculous to call Sheldon, et al., the chroniclers of their place and time. “Next we’ll hear that Danielle Steele is the Charles Dickens of San Francisco,” he says about that city’s best-selling author.

But in fact Sheldon and friends are writing about the places they know, from the offices of Hollywood moguls to the boutiques of Rodeo Drive to the rock music clubs along Sunset Strip. Their steamy tales romanticize these haunts for readers around the world for whom their books are translated to foreign languages. (Sheldon’s stories are reprinted in 18 foreign languages, Krantz’s in 22.) And that’s before the books find their way to the silver screen.

In the tradition of true showmen, the writers make it look easy. They squeeze out another hefty tome every two years or so. Krantz has completed five novels in 10 years. Sheldon has written eight books in a dozen years, Collins has 12 to her credit in just under 20 years.

The city’s critically acclaimed literary stylists, Irish-born Brian Moore among them, aren’t impressed. Moore, a world-class author of slim, introspective volumes such as “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” and most recently “The Color of Blood,” calls L.A.’s blockbusters schlock.

“These books are just another stick with which the East can beat California,” he laments. The reclusive resident of Malibu adds, “there’s never been a literary community in Los Angeles. Not in my 20 years here.”

Judith Krantz agrees that “West Coast writers always get a bad rap.” She came West from New York more than 15 years ago and entered the ranks of the L.A. blockbusters her first time out with “Scruples” in 1978. Two years later she made the front page of the New York Times when her “Princess Daisy” sold to Crown Publishers for a record-breaking $3.2 million.

Despite her success, Krantz finds, “There’s a genuine prejudice against California writers. The Eastern publishers think, ‘lotus eaters go home.’ ”

But Bruce Harris of Crown Publishers says that attitude is changing. On his first trip to Los Angeles, he recalls, he met both Krantz and the widow of Aldous Huxley, whose “Brave New World” is on every prep school reading list.

“Publishers don’t think there’s only one kind of writer in Los Angeles,” Harris insists. “Twenty years ago it was considered a semiliterate place. Now it’s a well-rounded community.”

Joan Didion, who made her reputation in Los Angeles, writing serious fiction as well as nonfiction, helped change the city’s image, Harris notes. Now, he concludes, “You don’t have to be defensive anymore.”

Defensive is hardly the word for the best-sellers of this show biz city. Of them all, Sidney Sheldon sets the standard. A few weeks ago he took off for the French Riviera with his editors from William Morrow. He invited them to the beach at Cap d’Antibes to relax and read his newest book, “Sands of Time.” And he picked up the tab.

Explaining Extravagances

Other times Sheldon has whisked editors off to his castle in Rome, his estate in Bel-Air, or his favorite luxury hotel in Monte Carlo. “I want to make it fun,” he says, to explain his extravagances.

Sheldon’s mellifluous voice makes him sound like a radio announcer, and his press agent compares his debonair style to that of screen idol David Niven. In fact, Sheldon’s earliest achievements were as creator of “I Dream of Jeannie” and “The Patty Duke Show,” two highly successful TV sitcoms of the ‘60s. Even after he got into the best-seller business he created “Hart to Hart” for TV in 1979.

Some would say Hollywood taught Sheldon how to write books and that that’s too bad. “These blockbuster books all have to do with the film industry, they’re books with a film line,” scowls James Ragan, director of USC’s professional writing program. He worries that L.A’s image as a haven for best sellers is “alarming” proof that we live in a non-literate, fantasy-craving culture.

And indeed most of the city’s big-name fiction writers do have roots in Hollywood--the ultimate fantasy land. Robbins was a vice president for Universal Studio when he got the idea to try novel writing. Wallace, like Sheldon, turned to novels after years as a Hollywood scriptwriter. Krantz and Collins may have learned how to build a movie-like story by osmosis. Both are married to producers who have brought one or more of their wive’s books to the screen.

Best-Seller Formula

The best-seller formula, Robbins says, is the same as for a script: “Nothing too heavy, easy to read, lots of action.”

“Action is what we have in common with Hollywood,” Wallace concurs from behind a screen of smoke that wafts from his ubiquitous pipe. “Hollywood teaches you not to get lost in thought.”

If that means weightiness depends entirely on the number of pages in a book, Sheldon’s agent, Gene Winnick of McIntosh & Otis, comes to the blockbuster’s defense. “Commercial writers bring a different perspective to publishing,” he begins. “There’s a snob appeal that goes with literary writing. But blockbuster writers can laugh all the way to the bank.”

And well they might. Educated guesses are that Sheldon earns $8 million per book, plus extras from foreign rights, screen deals and so on. Collins says she just signed an eight-figure agreement with Simon & Schuster, good for three more books.

Wallace says he has turned down multiple-book contracts for the past eight years, preferring to negotiate one at a time. And he isn’t afraid to reject offers he doesn’t like. “I know the name will sell the book,” he asserts. His latest, “The Honored Guest,” is making the rounds of publishing houses now.

Wallace in particular seems sensitive to the discrepancies between a blockbuster writer’s income and that of a serious stylist. “What Saul Bellow earns for one book would be an embarrassment to anybody out here,” Wallace contends. “Yet Bellow won the Nobel Prize.”

Still, he believes the system is fair. “Bellow doesn’t sell as many books as Sheldon,” Wallace says. “He doesn’t earn as much money for his publisher.”

The big money for blockbusters started rolling in about 10 years ago, Wallace recalls, when conglomerate companies began to invest in book publishing. Now Gulf & Western, Warner Communications and Universal/MCA pump considerable money into the business.

To qualify as a best seller a book has to top the 100,000 sales mark in a year, explains Daisy Maryles, executive editor of Publishers Weekly, the book business trade magazine. But real blockbuster sales are just warming up when they hit the 100,000 sales mark. Good sales by Wallace’s standards run between 150,000 and 500,000 for hardcover books, and from one to four million for paperback sales.

Who’s Higher on List

Once a writer soars to that stratosphere, says Wallace, simply making the best-seller list isn’t good enough. “We tease each other about who’s higher on the list,” he admits about himself and Sheldon.

To some extent, who rates where on the list is in the hands of Mort Janklow, the New York super-agent who has collected the lion’s share of best-selling writers into his den. He represents Sheldon, Collins and Krantz as well as Steele in San Francisco and Barbara Taylor Bradford, London’s reigning queen of the blockbusters.

“Mighty Mort,” Collins calls him. “He schedules our release dates with our publishers,” she explains. That way no two blockbuster writers of his are likely to have a novel coming out at the same time.

But best-seller status is one thing, celebrity status is something else. What determines the latter, in part at least, is hype. Krantz, petite, blonde and a self-described fitness fanatic, says the city’s sleepless publicity machine contributes to her glamorous image. “Everybody here knows at least one publicist,” she offers. “And there are all those paparazzi hanging around.” She is accustomed to being photographed and approached by autograph seekers outside the celebrity watering holes where she occasionally dines.

Gene Schwam, longtime press agent for Robbins and Sheldon, contends that the city’s literary-lights system is more contrived than Krantz credits it.

“Harold and I were the breakthrough team,” he says of himself and Robbins. “We brought the Hollywood marketing system, and glamour, to the book business. It used to be publishers promoted book titles. We promoted the author.”

Wallace contends that a movie or miniseries crossover is the key to a best-selling writer’s celebrity status. He recalls that his rise to stardom accompanied the movie premiere of his adapted novel, “The Prize,” with Paul Newman in the lead. “Suddenly I was a star,” he marvels. “People wanted to meet me.”

A Celebrity-Oriented Town

Michael Korda, Simon & Schuster’s editor in chief, raised in Los Angeles, is now the New York editor for both Collins and Robbins. He has worked with Wallace as well. Korda explains that L.A’s popular writers get the star treatment simply because of the city they live in. “It’s a celebrity-oriented town,” he explains.

The blockbuster writers learn to live with it. And they make their peace with East Coast critics as well.

“It’s a penalty of success,” Jackie Collins sighs. “The critics see a brand-name author and they feel bound to knock it.”

She can’t relate to the turgid, intellectual tales the East Coast critics seem to prefer. Her idea of a successful novel is one that requires a box of chocolates beside it. “I fail to see why a book should be a struggle to read,” she says with a toss of her tiger-striped mane.

So much for any sign of jealousy toward the literary lions. This city’s big-name novelists, considered by many an offshoot of Hollywood, may write books best suited to bubble baths and beaches, but they make no apologies for it. In fact they say they’re doing the literati a favor.

“If people want to go on to read the literary writers, let them,” Collins quips. “I’m the one who got them into the bookstore.”