Life in a Pajama Factory

7 1/2 CENTS (245 pp.}-- Richard Bissell--Atlantic-Little, Brown ($3.50).

One of the best-tested axioms of the writing business is: "Stick to what you know." By sticking close to what he knows, and by being casual about it, Author Richard Pike Bissell, 39, has won a reputation as a highly readable fellow.

A Stretch on the River (TIME, July 24, 1950) was a ribald first novel about the life Bissell had known as a Mississippi River pilot. In The Monongahela, he used more personal experience to pump some fresh water into the brackish Rivers of America series. More recently, Bissell has been working in his family's clothing factory in Dubuque, Iowa. The result is 7 1/2 Cents, a novel about life in an Iowa pajama factory.

The hero is Sid Sorokin, late of Chicago and Regal Pants Inc. Sid is plant superintendent for Sleep Tite now, and Sleep Tite (the Pa jama for Men of Bedroom Discrimination) is booming. The trouble is that the union is demanding a 7 1/2-cents-an-hour raise, and pulling a' slowdown to get it. Sid's problem is complicated by the fact that his boss, Mr. Hasler, is determined not to knuckle under to the union, while Sid's girl, redheaded Babe Williams, is one of the union ringleaders.

In the hands of some novelists, these slight and slightly forbidding materials would send readers of all ages straight to their Sleep Tites. Author Bissell keeps his book moving by devices of his own--and by not worrying much about his plot.

He sets the mood with chapter headings that consist of fine, nostalgic bits of flotsam from the Bissell memory (e.g., "No knowledge of music is necessary, merely place kazoo to lips and hum your favorite tune''1). His love scenes, which he plainly relishes, are never tedious. ("'The question is,' I said into the sweet smelling hair, 'whether a man of my age could become a Hotel Executive without any previous training. Your hair smells like springtime in Comiskey Park.' ") And the conversation around the plant sounds almost as if it had been taken down on a recorder. ("Oh my god last week he went to Dr. Baumer and what do they find but a zist on the gooms. He couldn't hardly eat no Sunday dinner. A nice goose I had, too.") Sid Sorokin gets fed up and quits Sleep Tite. taking his luscious redhead with him, but the exact resolution of the plot isn't really important to Author Bissell or anyone else. It is the natural talk, the sure feeling for the pace of Midwestern life, the shrewd humor of such scenes as the union picnic, that make 7 1/2 Cents, slight as it is, an oddly likable piece of Americana.

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