The Insight Guide to Bookland

In a famous New Yorker cartoon, a small book, sprouting arms and legs, having jumped from its place on the shelf, plaintively looks up at its owner, placidly watching television, and demands “Read me!” For those of us whose bookshelves (long since having fulfilled their obligations), night stands, coffee tables, breakfast nooks, car trunks, piano lids, and, in one extreme case, refrigerator, are laden with stacks of books all begging the same question, this cartoon causes at least a static shock of recognition.

For there are many books. Perhaps too many books, to which the remainder and close-out tables of the nation’s bookstores bear witness. This year alone, more than 80,000 new books will search for their place on the shelf . . . 80,000!

So how does one pick among myriad books, each of which has already gone through a long and arduous selection procedure. Consider: From writer (“It’s great, I’ll submit it/It’s trash, I’ll toss it”) to agent/editor (“It’s great, let’s publish it/It’s junk, let’s send it back”) to reviewer (“It’s great, let’s assign it/It’s awful, let’s give it to the library”) to bookseller (“It’s great, I’ll order two/It’s garbage, I’ll order 10”) and finally to reader (“It’s great, has the author written anything else?/It stinks, let’s give it to Uncle Arnold for Father’s Day”).

Gradually certain books do emerge from this old-as-papyrus process as possessing quality, value and permanence. Determining and locating this group of books has itself been the subject of books, ranging from Hutchins and Adler’s “Great Books” through Clifton Fadiman’s and Philip Ward’s lifetime reading plans to the very current “The Prentice-Hall Good Reading Guide” by Kenneth McLeish.

Add now to these and other previous efforts THE READER’S CATALOG, edited by Geoffrey O’Brien, with Stephen Wasserstein and Helen Morris (Jason Epstein/Random House: $24.95, paper; 1,382 pp.; 0-924322-00-4). Conceived by Random House editorial director Jason Epstein, the catalogue purports to list more than 40,000 of the best books in print (books, not titles), in more than 200 separate categories.

It is a big, red book. In an 8 1/2 x 11 format, it’s 2 inches thick and weighs in at about 8 pounds, leading early promotional material to compare it to the Manhattan phone book (which it resembles in more ways than one).

The catalogue is divided into 15 major areas. The first four, covering world literature, are encyclopedic in scope, though the lion’s share of space is devoted to American and British writing. Even comics get their due in a section titled “Popular Reading,” covering such subcategories as true crime, spy and espionage, science fiction, romances and Westerns.

Following sections include the arts, history and politics, religion and philosophy, kids’ books, the sciences pure and social, leisure and a section designated “Practical Advice” (from solving your baby’s sleep problems to investing in junk bonds to less-practical advice on channeling or the connection between Elvis and near-death experiences).

The task of collecting, collating and organizing this much material is no mean feat, and editor Geoffrey O’Brien with his staff of more than 100 consultants has succeeded in creating a catalogue that is both scholarly and accessible, that challenges the reader without overwhelming, that skirts the academic but refuses to pander to popular taste. By the manner in which “The Reader’s Catalog” presents what is essentially an attractively annotated list of books, it must be called a triumph.

Not that there haven’t been a few casualties along the way. Although 40,000 books sounds like a lot, even a cursory examination can show how limiting it really is.

Let’s just open up here to a random page . . . ah! . . . Page 586, “Western Classical Music” . . . how nice! We start off with the “New Grove Dictionary.” At $2,100, it’s as good a place to start as any. The “Harper,” “Harvard,” and “Oxford” dictionaries round out the general reference books, but how unfortunate to leave out Charles Osborne’s highly readable “Dictionary of Composers.” What’s this? The 1984 “New Penguin Stereo Record and Cassette Guide” but not the 1988 “New Guide to Compact Discs and Cassettes” nor Jim Svejda’s irreverent and opinionated “Record Shelf” guide?

Let’s go on to the next page. Ah! They’ve included David Fallow’s “Dufay.” More than just another composer’s biography, it’s a portrait vivace con brio of the musician’s life in 15th-Century Europe. But here, under “Baroque,” we find five books on J. S. Bach, one on Handel, one on Scarlatti but none on Vivaldi, Telemann or Corelli. And here are 10 (yep! 10) books on the subject of Beethoven, all worthy, but lacking is J. W. Sullivan’s moving “Beethoven: His Spiritual Development.” It’s great to see H. C. Landon’s five-volume set, “Haydn: Chronicle and Works,” an achievement in every sense (including price at $350), but how odd to drop the one-volume illustrated edition, “Haydn: His Life and Music” (at a mere $45).

And so it goes. “The Reader’s Catalog” is filled with pleasant surprises (Ostwald’s “Schumann”); some disappointments (the only Brahms bio is Geiringer’s mildly revised 1936 opus); some shocks (can the Craft/Stravinsky “Chronicle of a Friendship” truly be out-of-print?); and occasional provincialism (does opera in America consist only of “The Met” and “The New York City Opera”?).

These objections amount to no more than carping, but I will carp further. Though the catalogue provides a full and varied introduction to many writers, some of the selections are questionable (the incomplete Oxford Shakespeare over the Arden?), some subcategories are confused (especially in history), some selections are heavily weighted toward the traditional (“Literary Criticism” is so weighted) or the ethnocentric (thus “Religion” devotes six pages to Judaism, seven to Christianity, but barely more than two to Islam). For every section that provokes wonder and amazement (see “Caribbean Literature”), there is an equally boring and desultory countersection (see “Bestsellers”).

For the most part, the organization is superb. Some books simply defy clean categorization. Where does one put, for example, “Abelard and Heloise”? Letters? Belles--Lettres? Love and sex? Philosophy? “The Reader’s Catalog” clumps it in a section simply titled “Medieval Literature.” Fair enough.

Any reader of the catalogue will spot literary lapses. While I cannot fault the inclusion of Jonathan Baumbach, Rosalyn Drexler or Kristin McCloy on the list of 20th-Century American fiction writers, I’m sorry to see the exclusion, among others, of Elizabeth Benedict, Fred Chappell, Charles Baxter, Judith Freeman, Chuck Rosenthal, Valerie Sayers and Carolyn See, all of whom are at least the equal of many who do appear.

Other, perhaps even more egregious omissions: Eduardo Galeano’s first two volumes in the brilliant “Memory of Fire”; Joseph Epstein’s elegant, witty, provocative and often infuriating essays, “The Middle of My Tether” and “Plausible Prejudices”; Nicholas Slonimsky’s most entertaining collection, “A Lexicon of Musical Invective”; Edith Hamilton’s classic “Mythology.”

Interspersed throughout the text are “celebrity lists,” compilations of favorite or most-admired books by well-known readers. While most are prosaic and pretentious, at least three qualify in my “don’t miss” category: Toni Morrison’s 13 books helpful to beginning fiction writers; Dominick Dunne’s 10 novels that should have been best sellers, and Janet Malcolm’s unclassifiable “Favorite Reading.”

It would also be both helpful and valuable to include date of publication and number of pages. The former sets a context and informs the reading; the latter has more to do with the reader’s commitment (“Do I really want to spend 600 pages of my life with ‘The Pound Era’?”)

Finally, it should be mentioned that “The Reader’s Catalog” was born amid some controversy. When the book was initially presented to booksellers, the mock-up omitted any reference to the fact that this is a mail-order catalogue. The final version provided that information on both the cover and first page. While some booksellers found this to be deceptive, others complained that selling this catalogue was tantamount to Sears distributing the Montgomery Ward catalogue. Some stores, including some of the major chains, have refused to stock it.

As a reader and an independent bookseller, I don’t buy that argument. “The Reader’s Catalog” is just too much fun to flip through. It reminds you of books that have gone unread, books that should have been read, books that want to be read. It is good for readers, but what is good for readers will help stimulate interest in and increase patronage of bookstores, newsstands, libraries, and even other mail-order catalogues. For those of us in the business of books who feel ourselves to be the last trench in the war against the onslaught of movies, videos, and the “T-word,” “The Reader’s Catalog” should be counted an ally, an extension of the store itself.

Billing itself as the “essential resource for book buyers,” the “Catalog” is at the very least a kind of “Baedeker’s Bibliopolis,” a valuable and soon-to-be-well-thumbed guide to the world of books. Like the best travel books, it draws attention to the book world’s high points. Some of the information is dated, much of it is highly subjective and, as on any trip, the most exciting and rewarding adventures await in the undiscovered byways and seldom traveled side streets. For these adventures, “The Reader’s Catalog” serves not as an end but as a starting point.