Literary Newcomer

Out on the newsstands of Manhattan last week went 100,000 copies of a new literary review, tabloid-sized, priced at 25-c-, and running to 48 pages. The ambitious newcomer, calling itself the New York Review of Books, was prompted by the city's newspaper strike, but claims this was only incidental. Its goal: "To publish the sort of literary journal which the editors and contributors feel is needed in America."

Born at a literary party, the Review is edited by Barbara Epstein, wife of a Random House vice president, and Bob Silvers, a Harper & Row editor. They lined up an impressive list of critics (for free) and 20 pages of ads (for $550 a page).

The writing is bright, sometimes biting and provocative. Gore Vidal found John Hersey's Here to Stay "not stimulant, but barbiturate"; Dwight Macdonald wished aloud that Arthur Schlesinger "had never gotten involved with high politics." The Review ignored only what it considered trivial "except occasionally to reduce a temporarily inflated reputation." Among the reputations it sought to deflate: John Updike's The Centaur ("a poor novel irritatingly marred by good features"); J. D. Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (he "deals with the emotions and problems of adolescence, and it is no great slight to him to say that he has not yet advanced beyond them"); Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (an "unconvincing mixture of lively dialogue and incongruous tricks").

So far, no plans for a second issue.

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