When Books Went to War (12 page)

For example, after meeting with a dozen leading commercial printers to price the cost of printing, the council decided to work with five firms that promised a deep discount: the Cuneo Press, Street & Smith, the W. S. Hall Company, the Rumford Press, and the Western Printing and Lithographing Company. However, by November 1943, Western Printing began grumbling about this deal and even threatened to quit. Representatives from the Army spoke directly with Western's representatives and tried to convince the company to continue printing the ASEs. One frustrated colonel advised the council that it avoid such episodes by having the ASEs declared essential by the government. In the end, Stern was forced to negotiate a 10 percent increase in the prices paid to Western Printing in order to secure this company's uninterrupted service.
Throughout the project, Stern would face similar obstacles that threatened the timely production of the ASEs. He became quite adept at hurdling them.

By September 1943, the A-series was delivered to the Army and Navy, totaling 1.5 million of the smallest paperback books ever mass-produced in the United States. In just seven months, the idea was hatched, “planned, organized, and put into effective operation”; contracts were drafted, signed, and executed and the books were manufactured and delivered. It would go down in history as one of the best-coordinated production programs of the entire war.

 

As the American media closely followed the 1942 and 1943 VBCs, a curiosity surrounded the council's ASE plan. After all, millions of Americans had contributed to the VBC, and they wanted to know more about the organization that had replaced it. One of the first publications to reconcile the change of the guard was the
New Republic
. It began by explaining that the servicemen's appetite for reading proved to be greater than what the VBC could accommodate, thus the council was printing special paperbacks exclusively for men in uniform. The article reported that, each month, the council would publish fifty thousand miniature reprints of twenty-five or more titles. As many as thirty-five million ASEs would be printed in a single year. Despite this impressive feat, the
New Republic
was disparaging of the council's work. “The books themselves are designed for cheapness, convenience and wear-outability,” the article said. By printing the books on “flimsy newsprint,” the books would weigh less than hardcovers, but the author of the article, Malcolm Cowley, doubted they would hold up for long. “My impression from handling one of the advance copies, is that it would fall to pieces after two or three readings,” Cowley wrote.

The council had hustled for months, created a book unlike any other, and pushed these literary novelties through production lines in record time. Understandably, it was disappointed by this uncomplimentary description. Archibald Ogden, the council's executive director, wrote a letter to the editor of the
New Republic
in defense of the ASEs. Describing the article as “a little unfair,” Ogden went on to set the record straight. First of all, the ASEs were
not
printed on flimsy newsprint. “The paper selected for the Armed Services Editions is two grades higher than newsprint and more expensive; it is also more durable,” Ogden countered. With respect to the article's statement about the books falling to pieces after a couple of readings, Ogden estimated that each book would survive six readings (and possibly more if it was not roughly handled). Ogden explained that these “editions are by all odds the strongest of any paper book in comparable size on the market.” Finally, as to the “expendability” of the books, Ogden said that the ASEs were inexpensively produced so that millions of good books could be provided to men stationed around the world in a format that suited their circumstances. A serviceman would be able to choose whatever book interested him, take it wherever his missions sent him, and pass it along to someone else when finished. Reinforcements would arrive each month to supplement the books that remained in good condition and replace the ones that were not.

In the end, the
New Republic
was alone in expressing misgivings about the ASEs. By all other accounts, the project was a resounding success. Months after the Malcolm Cowley piece, the
New York Times Book Review
ran a story on the ASEs, reporting that “mountains of books—good books, including classics, current best sellers, history, biography, science and poetry—are being distributed among our fighting men overseas by a novel publishing arrangement between American book publishers and the Army and Navy . . . Bundles of these books have been flown into the Anzio beachhead by plane. Others were passed out to the marines on Tarawa within a few days after the last remnant of Japanese opposition had been extinguished on that atoll. They have been dropped by parachute to outpost forces on lonely Pacific islands, issued in huge lots to the hospitals behind combat areas in all points of the world; [and] passed out to soldiers as they embarked on transports for overseas duty.”

The account in the
New York Times
was confirmed by many letters, mailed from exotic locales, to ASE authors. For example, Leo Rosten, whose
The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N
(published under the pseudonym Leonard Q. Ross) was the first ASE to be printed (A-1), received countless “moving, even heart-breaking” letters from men in the armed forces. One that stood out in his mind, even forty years after his ASE was printed, said:

 

I want to thank you profoundly, for myself, and more importantly, [for] the men here in this godforsaken part of the globe. We fry by day and freeze by night. What we are doing near the Persian Gulf . . . no one knows. All we have . . . for recreation is a ping-pong set—with one paddle only.

Last week we received your book on Mr. K*A*P*L*A*N. I read it and simply roared with laughter. As an experiment I read it one night at campfire. The men
howled
. I have not heard such laughs in months. Now they demand I only read one K*A*P*L*A*N story a night: a ration on pleasure. I read the stories with an accent; I hope you would approve.

 

When the Army and Navy received their first shipment of ASEs in September 1943, the response from top brass was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. The Army immediately asked the council to increase the number of books published each month. As the project was in its infancy, and the production of thirty titles proved to be a significant undertaking, the council could not promise an instant reply. Yet when the B-series of thirty books was made ready for shipment in mid-October, Lieutenant Colonel Trautman requested that the council increase the print run for each title from fifty thousand to sixty thousand copies. Still no commitment was made by the council. In January 1944, Trautman attended a council meeting and reported that ASEs had made it even to the most remote locations: Guadalcanal, Bora Bora, and many other small islands in the South Pacific. Trautman trumpeted the success of the program and begged for more books. Or rather, commanded it. The council was ordered to increase the quantity of ASEs produced from fifty thousand copies of each title per month to seventy-seven thousand copies; each book run thereafter was to be increased by three thousand copies each month.

The council was eager to learn how the men in the armed forces felt about the new editions. Although ASE authors began to receive mail from servicemen, the council itself had received little feedback. Considering the enormity of the project, the amount of resources required to produce the books in such numbers, and the unprecedented cooperation among rival companies to bring about this common goal, many hoped that the council's work was not done in vain. Questions abounded. What if there were too many westerns? Were biographies and history books even wanted? Was there some genre of books that the council had overlooked? Were the ASEs standing up to the rigors of war and multiple readings? Council members could only hope that the gifts of literature, humor, biography, poems, nonfiction, and short stories were being received with the same enthusiasm with which they were manufactured.

Not all council members patiently waited for word from overseas. Stanley Rinehart, of Farrar & Rinehart, sent a note to his friend Charles Rawlings, a war correspondent for the
Saturday Evening Post
, asking if Rawlings could give him some idea of how the program was faring. Rawlings replied from an outpost in Australia in June 1944—almost nine months after the ASEs were first sent to the Army and Navy—surprised that the council remained in the dark about its efforts. “What the hell, Stanley,” Rawlings exclaimed in the opening of his letter. “Do you mean to say you publishers haven't been told what those limp, elongated, little reprints are doing? Told! You should be given DSM's [Distinguished Service Medals].”

 

Dog-eared and moldy and limp from the humidity those books go up the line. Because they are what they are, because they can be packed in a hip pocket or snuck into a shoulder pack, men are reading where men have never read before—in this SWPAC [Southwest Pacific] theatre anyway. I've seen GI's with them . . . three days after the beach head at Hollandia. The kids were hungry on . . . iron rations and they were up to their buttocks in that terribly disappointing Hollandia marsh mud, but there they were, guarding a captured Jap plane against souvenir hunters or in their sack in the beach camp or mooning out after . . . chow, reading a book.

 

Rawlings told a story of how, one day, as he was driving along in a jeep, he noticed a big crowd outside a PX (post exchange) and was curious to learn the source of this ruckus. “Even the ice cream hand-out counter was deserted,” he said. As there had been a rumor that long-awaited cigarette lighters were due any day, Rawlings concluded that “nothing less could have caused the furor and I needed one of those things myself.” So he stomped on the brakes and joined the melee. It wasn't lighters that were the main attraction—“it was your books.” “They had come in . . . those taut-corded brown paper bundles that seem to protect them very well and the PX help was cutting the bundles open and dumping the things into a big bin,” Rawlings said. A line quickly formed, and the men urged one another along. “No time to shop and look for titles. Grab a book, Joe, and keep goin'. You can swap around afterwards,” the men called out. As for the lucky soldier who grabbed
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
—“the guy that got that one howled with joy,” Rawlings said. With such a popular book came a great responsibility to read it quickly and pass it on to the next in line. “He'd have to sleep on it to ever get to finish it,” Rawlings said. The books were not only enjoyed on land. The ship that carried him to Australia had two bundles of ASEs, Rawlings continued, and “we read out twenty-five blessed days on them.” There was nothing else to do, and everyone was thankful to have them. With complete confidence, he assured the council that any worries or concerns about the books were unfounded. Rawlings concluded his letter by goading the publishers never to quit, since twenty million books were not nearly enough. He also asked that the publishers not “feel sore—as I do—that no one has ever mentioned the good job.”

Other war correspondents penned unsolicited reports about the superb work of the council—noting the popularity of books in their published articles and also in letters written directly to council members. Lewis Gannett, whose column “Books and Things” was published in the
Herald Tribune
from 1930 through 1956, felt compelled to write the council once he saw the ASEs in action. A hardcore book lover and well-respected journalist, Gannett had critiqued some eight thousand books over the course of his career. His opinion of the council's book program carried weight.

The council was gratified to learn that it had earned Gannett's compliments and respect. “From hospitals in England, from Negro service units in Normandy, and . . . the Army besieging Brest”—“your books [are] everywhere—in the front lines and at the rear, in jeeps, in pillboxes, in planes, [and] at bases,” Gannett said. They were exceedingly popular with the troops. Men were reading wherever and whenever they had spare time. Gannett reported that he had “even seen a Piper Cub pilot, bored with a milk run from Rennes to Charbourg, pull one out from beside him while letting his plane do a bit of piloting on its own.” He also recalled “a division where the non-coms and privates at the back of the general's war tent were all reading and discussing constantly—they had a lot of time when they were just on duty, with nothing to do except be on duty, and they wanted good books.” Gannett said that there were “lots of boys in the army with a hunger for good reading” and many “lonely boys over here with a lot of time on their hands.” In expressing his general impression on how the ASEs were received, Gannett said: “it would do all your hearts good to see how the boys gobble your books. It's a grand job.”

Another journalist who gave an early appraisal of the council was Gretta Palmer. Palmer began her journalistic career with the
New Yorker
, and also wrote for the
Sunday World
and the
World-Telegram
. Known for expressing her thoughts on controversial topics, Palmer was not one to temper her strong opinions no matter how contentious or unpopular.
As a war correspondent, she spent several months in the Mediterranean theater writing handfuls of disparaging reports criticizing what she had observed. In her own words, she had published “bad-tempered articles, telling various military and civilian organizations what I thought was wrong.” When the council received a letter from Palmer, publishers likely assumed they were in for a blistering evaluation.

They found the opposite. In light of her critical essays about other war organizations, she wrote that it was “only fair that I should lay a wreath of orchids on your council which is, I truly believe, doing the best job of any group which has made an effort to make the soldiers' lives bearable,” she said. Palmer marveled that a soldier was “allowed to pick [an ASE] up in a hotel in Casablanca and take it off with [him] on [a] plane, leaving it for someone else to read in a hospital in Marseilles.” She observed that the format of the books was “superb for hospital patients: they are the only books I've seen that a patient can read with comfort, while he's flat on his back.” Having been hospitalized twice while on assignment, she personally appreciated the distraction the ASEs provided as she convalesced. Palmer said that the titles could not be bettered. “If it weren't so ridiculously impertinent of me, I'd thank you on behalf of the soldiers, but I can at least thank you for the hours of pleasure you gave me,” she wrote.