Fluff or Fancy?
For some time now, the publishing industry has tended to predicate its summer sales on the idea that the best books for reading under the sun are the easy, fluffy ones. We don’t disagree; it’s generally too hot here to do big thinking, anyway. But summer reading is also the season to revisit — or read for the first time — the classics you’ve been meaning to devour all along. Everyman’s Library (www.randomhouse.com/knopf/classics/) and Modern Library (www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/) always have reliable offerings; their Web sites feature their new releases prominently. This year is the 75th anniversary of Random House, and to celebrate, the publisher is releasing 18 of its classic titles — in their original covers — in three seasonal installments. Already in stores are Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Look for Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, W.H. Auden’s Collected Longer Poems, Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, Moss Hart’s Act One, The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, and Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance to arrive in stores in late August or early September.This article appears in May 31 • 2002.