‘Temptation,’ With a New Cover, Due at Bookstores, Publisher Says

Touchstone Books has published 200,000 paperback copies of “The Last Temptation of Christ” by Nikos Kazantzakis with a new cover displaying the “crown of thorns” design used in advertising the controversial movie.

“They should be in bookstores next week,” said publisher Sol Skolnick from New York. Skolnick said none of the controversy surrounding the movie’s release has been felt by the paperback arm of Simon & Schuster. “It really hasn’t been an issue for us,” he said.

The novel, first available in English translation in 1960, sold 150,000 copies in paperback since Touchstone acquired rights in 1966. The 200,000 new copies is not an unusual number “for a tie-in with a movie that is having a good box office,” Skolnick said.

Meanwhile, United Artists Theater Circuit has agreed to show the film in selected theaters. It is not known how many of the UA’s 2,549 screens will play “Last Temptation.”

In Houston, police officers in one precinct were banned from moonlighting at security jobs at a theater showing “Last Temptation” this weekend, the Associated Press reported. “I feel the film is simply in bad taste and sacrilegious, and I just didn’t want them working there,” Chief Deputy Constable Glen Cheek of Precinct 5 said.

Houston is one of eight additional cities that will open “Last Temptation” this weekend, bringing to 17 the number of cities showing the film. It is being shown in one theater in each city.