One of the most remarkable aspects of the council’s ASE endeavor was that it set broad benchmarks and worked to avoid censorship of the soldiers’ reading. This is not to say that the council was permitted to print any book regardless of content. Once publishers and the council narrowed their list of potential ASEs, the council’s readers flagged any passages that might be offensive to America’s allies, give aid and comfort to the enemy, conflict with the spirit of American democracy, or be offensive to any religious or racial groups, trades, or professions. These guidelines were liberally interpreted, but they did prevent the issuance of certain books. For example, although it passed the Army and Navy’s review, the council recommended dropping George Santayana’s Persons and Places (an autobiography) because the book expressed a view deemed “dubious as to democracy.” When Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (a western whose heroine befriends gunslinging cowboys who urge her to break away from the evils of the Mormon Church) was on the verge of being printed, a reader objected to it because of its “bitter attack on the Mormons.”
Both books were rejected. The council generally believed it was better to not print a book than to perform surgery on it to eliminate offensive words or passages. The latter reeked too heavily of censorship, and the council did not want to skew an author’s intent or story. As the government was funding the project in the name of boosting morale, it is understandable why the council avoided books that were objectionable to or discriminatory toward certain groups.
Still, all told, the titles produced as ASEs cut a very wide swath. John Jamieson, an expert on publishing during World War II, said that the ASEs consisted of “just about everything . . . except text and technical books and the juvenile and feminine fields.” There were classics (David Copperfield, Shakespeare’s poetry), modern classics (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Great Gatsby), westerns (Sunset Pass, Six Gun Showdown), mysteries (Harvard Has a Homicide, The Murder That Had Everything), biographies (The Story of George Gershwin, Benjamin Franklin), comics and art (Soldier Art, Cartoons for Fighters, and The Sad Sack), and sports (The Brooklyn Dodgers, The Best Sports Stories of 1944). Plus, there were books about math (Mathematics and the Imagination), the sciences (Your Servant, the Molecule), history (The Republic), and current affairs (U.S. Foreign Policy). There were titles to cheer the men up (Laugh It Off, Happy Stories Just to Laugh At) and others whose titles posed questions that the men asked themselves (Is Sex Necessary?, Where Do People Take Their Troubles?). There was something for everyone. By the time its mission was complete, the council had printed approximately twelve hundred titles.
Authors whose books were selected as ASEs were rewarded with a loyal readership of millions of men. Word spread quickly about the titles that were perennial favorites, even reaching the home front. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which was written in 1925, was considered a failure during Fitzgerald’s lifetime. But when this book was printed as an ASE in October 1945, it won the hearts of an army of men. Their praise reverberated back home, and The Great Gatsby was rescued from obscurity and has since become an American literary classic.
For authors, learning that their book had made the cut for ASE publication was a great honor. Emily Kimbrough, who cowrote Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, said that she and Cornelia Otis Skinner were “more proud of . . . that edition than of being selected Book of the Month.” David Ewen, author of The Story of George Gershwin and Men of Popular Music, once explained that the publication of both of his books as ASEs had a “particularly significant meaning.” At the time, he “was in the armed forces and knew only too well what a solace books could be to the tired, lonely men stationed in far-off places.” When David Lavender learned his first adult novel, One Man’s West, had been chosen as an ASE, he was incredibly grateful to receive such recognition. “Fifty-three thousand copies! I could scarcely believe such figures . . . And I am inclined to believe that having those fifty-three thousand copies spread far and wide gave the book a running start toward three hardcover editions, followed by its paperback reprint.” To this day, the book remains in print.
The books chosen for publication each month were collectively dubbed a series. Each early series was assigned a letter, and each book was assigned a number. For example, the first month of titles consisted of the A-series, numbered one through thirty: A-1, A-2, and so on. Beginning with the J-series, thirty-two titles were printed each month. The Q-series marked the beginning of forty titles per series. The T-series was the last to designate a letter-number combination on the books themselves (although the council’s records continued the letter-number assignment; the Z-series was followed by the AA-series, BB-series, and so on); thereafter, beginning with the number 665, each book was assigned a number only. Over time, the print run for each series steadily rose; 125,000 copies of each title were printed beginning with the Q-series, and a staggering 155,000 copies of each title were printed from the W-series to the Z-.
Managing the production of the ASEs was Philip Van Doren Stern. Formerly the executive editor of Pocket Books, Stern had a background in paperbacks and was familiar with both the editorial and production aspects of the paperback industry. The task before Stern was herculean. As manager of the Armed Services Editions branch of the council, Stern had to maintain constant relations with five different Army and Navy offices, a paper firm (Bulkley Dunton) and its mills, five printers, a dozen or more composition (typesetting) houses, the entire membership of the Council on Books in Wartime (both individually as publishers and collectively through the council’s management committee), and an advisory committee on book selection. Even with the help of a paid staff of ten people, the magnitude of the project and the number of moving pieces that Stern supervised was mind-boggling. That it all came together, and month after month the books were chosen, printed, and distributed, is a testament to the dedication of all parties involved. The project certainly was not without its headaches.
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 wo
rk. “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.
When Books Went to War Page 9
