The Ubiquitous Paperback

A Brief and Unauthoritative
Explanation Concerning
a Recent Development
in American Reading Habits
By FRED SCHAEI

"BACK" is a very important word
on any campus. On most cam-
puses, with the exception of the
University of Chicago, the root
word is prefixed with "half-",
"quarter-", or "full-". But by now,
everyone knows there has been a
philological revolution; in these
spheres there is a new dominant
influence: the prefix "paper-".
It might be appropriate to add
here that the most important
aspect of the Paperback Revolu-
tion is a philological question.
Several evenings in a row at the
Chi Omega house, heated argu-
ments arose among the Phi Beta
Kappas present, arguments that
have undoubtedly been repeated in
every bagnio from Bluestocking,
Massachusetts, to Libido, Cali-
fornia (a suburb of Hollywood).
The question was simple, but pro-
found.
Some of the boys maintained
that the only term that could pro-
perly cover the softbound books
was "paperback," but a moiety of
the clan rejected this absurd posi-
tion and maintained that "paper-
bound" was the genteel term, the
only term ever used in this sense
by the British nobility. Three boys
at one table proposed the term
"softbound," but they were im-
mediately depledged. Everyone
looked to the leader of the group
to solve the problem, but the
spokesman for the "bound" fac-
tion made a Freudian slip on the
word "mastered," whereupon the
spokesman was slapped with a
glove and called a poltroon.

are not bound with paper, but with
glue or thread; and how does one
determine precisely what is the
back of a book? In addition, paper
books are not covered with paper,
but with a rather thin cardboard; "$V
and that is not very soft. But a
more important question was Paperbacks-Wonderful for Inverse-snob Appeal
raised by the entire affair: pre-
cisely what were all those men do- However, no one can seriously Without Liquor;" "Let's Name the nardo da Vinci. On the cover is P
tug at the Chi Omega house? consider the concept of paperbacks Baby;" "Morphy's Games of picture of a bosomy woman with a
as a radical plot when he notes a Chess;" "Pigeon Racing;" "The torn skirt, being hauled up a
THERE ARE over twenty million Case of James Dean;" "How You
books currently in circulation representative sampling of the pa- Can Forecast the Weather;" "Mul- mountain by a half-nude man,
in the Western world, most of perbacks available; "The Call tivibrators, Basic Synchros and while another woman with only
them overdue, and among them Girl;" "The Modern Meat Cook- Servomechanisms;" "Honey Lips;" half a blouse lies bleeding on the
are approximately six million pa- book;" "Miracle Gardening Tips and "How to Read a Book." hillside. The reader will, according
perbacks. (Plus 1001 Tips for Today's Gar- The Lion Library has a book to statistics, spend 5.8 minutes
The paperback is not a new in- dener) ;" "A Dictionary of Obsolete called "The Deluge," "the first more looking at the cover than he
vention. The country for paper- English;" "How to Write Success- and only novel written by one of will spend reading the book.
backs,,of course, is France; nothing ful Business Letters;" "How to Live mankind's ranking geniuses," Leo- (Concluded on Pa. e 10)
is very permanent there. In Eng- --- _--_-_--_-__-_-_-_-
land, not many paperbacks are
published; but then again, they
even proofread there. Poor France.
Think of the manpower waste'
everywhere one goes, he sees stu-
dents sitting around slitting books
open. In France, each person has
his personal bookbinder--a carry-
over, no doubt, from the daysII X l
when each had his own corset-

maker.
The origin of the paperback is
a mystery, as origins often are.
But the most authoritative claim
may be that made by Thomas
Doolittle, a seller of pornography
on the Left Bank.
When a connoisseur of the art
offered a good price for the covers
of Mr. Doolittle's hardbound books,
he obligingly ripped them off; and,
not being a man to miss a profit,

THE DUEL was arranged im- he sold the interiors sans cloth
mediately, to be fought on the overing to university students for
railroad tracks west of the city, an untidy sum of filthy lucre,
the idea being that the loser would Let us finish our short history
be left unconscious between the by stating that San Francisco has
tracks at a spot calculated by en- already seen the rise of the Paper-
gineers to be the precise place back-Book-of-the-Month Club.
where those travellers who please
did "not use while in the station" THE IDEA behind the paperback
would use. The troupe set out, but book is that essential books
nothing resulted from the college may, in this inexpensive form, be
prank; nobody got past the Old purchased by the masses.
German. One publisher's slogan is "Good
The argument would surely have Reading for the Millions." Wheth-
been inconclusive from a philo- er "millions" refers to profit or to
sophical viewpoint, for paper books population is debatable, but we
shall assume it to mean popula-
Fred Schaen, a member of tion. It thereby becomes clear that
The Daily reviewing staff, the entire paperback movement is
speds osto fhi.tue. .'a Communist-inspired idea, made
spends mos of hias time in to stir unrest among the lower
bookstores looking at Ih classes who can now purchase their
covers own ideas without any help from
Andrew Carnegie.

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SUNDAY, MAY 3, 1959

Page Seven