PLUS: The worst books of 1997 By Dwight Garner Our critics pick the worst, and the most overrrated, titles of 1997 T A B L E+T A L K Discuss 1997's best books and its worst books in Table Talk. R E V I E W S For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture An inquiry into "the loss of common decency in American culture," from an author known for his critique of advertising (12/24/97) R E C E N T L Y Were the '60s a fraud? By Gary Kamiya (12/22/97) Save these books! By Dwight Garner (12/04/97) The art of life By Jay Parini (11/19/97) The Gospel according to Paul By Mark Hertsgaard (11/12/97) The Salon interview: Doris Lessing By Dwight Garner (11/11/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Books feature archive		The year in books page 2 of 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The memoir glut showed no signs of slowing down (among the year's best were J.M. Coetzee's "Scenes From a Provincial Life," James Salter's "Burning the Days," Thomas Lynch's "The Undertaking" and Jean-Dominique Bauby's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"), but memoir as a cultural obsession and weekly Charlie Rose topic seems over, played out, kaput. Other writers popped up in new and often surprising formats. Tom Wolfe released a discarded chunk of his new novel, "Chocolate City," which is due next year, on audiotape only. Titled "Ambush at Fort Bragg" and read by actor and fellow Yalie Edward Norton, it was a brisk and dazzling slice of media criticism and surely the best fiction that came out of my (rental) car stereo this year. Updike popped up on Amazon.com, delivering the first and last sentences of a collaborative murder mystery, co-written with Amazon customers. Updike's Kakutani-friendly opener: "Miss Tasso Polk at ten-ten alighted from the elevator onto the olive tiles of the nineteenth floor only lightly nagged by a sense of something wrong." Amazon had a hit on its hands. Stephen King's silkiest move this year happened off the page. King fled Viking, his longtime publisher, and set out after someone willing to pay him a Jim Carrey-esque $17 million advance for each of his next three books. He wound up at Simon & Schuster with a deal that many in the publishing world will be watching closely -- it guarantees him a $2 million advance per book and an unprecedented 50 percent share of the profits. Perhaps he'd been perusing Donald Trump's "The Art of the Comeback." The King deal, with its repercussions, is merely one more reason for publishers to fret. Book sales have been off by as much as 5 percent for each of the last several years, and some began to panic this year. In June, shortly after posting a $7 million loss for the quarter, HarperCollins shocked many observers (and certainly some of its writers) when it tried to staunch the flow of red ink by abruptly canceling more than 100 titles. Spookier still was the news that many publishers have begun to turn to book chains such as Barnes & Noble and Borders (which is among Salon's sponsors) for advice about what books to publish and how. The New York Times noted that Grove Press abandoned plans to publish a memoir titled "Love Potion No. 9" by songwriter Jerry Leiber after Barnes & Noble responded coolly to it and ordered a mere 1,200 copies. Similarly, when Random House was unhappy with the dust jacket for Mario Puzo's "The Last Don," it turned to a Barnes & Noble buyer for advice. (The cover changed from black to crimson, and was stamped with more eye-grabbing typography.) The splashiest behind-the-scenes news this fall was Harold Evans' departure from Random House after seven years as the publishing house's scene-making president and publisher. Did Harry jump or was he pushed? Most seemed to agree it was a mixture of both. At the time of Evans' exit, Random House was in a slump -- out of the 30 titles on the New York Times bestseller list that week, only three were RH titles: John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," Arundhati Roy's surprise-bestseller "The God of Small Things" and a book by Monty Roberts called "The Man Who Listens to Horses." Worse for Evans was the fact that, as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, each of those titles was acquired by editor in chief Ann Godoff, Evans' replacement. Evans' departure may mean the end of the Big Dick management style, at least at Random House. Evans liked Big Books by Big Names, and he threw for them the kind of parties that regularly landed him (along with his wife, New Yorker editor Tina Brown) in Page Six and other gossip columns. Among his successes were Colin Powell's "My American Journey" and Anonymous/Joe Klein's "Primary Colors." Among his notable miscues were the $5 million he paid to Marlon Brando for an autobiography that tanked and $2.5 million to ex-Clinton advisor and foot-fetishizer Dick Morris. (Cynthia Ozick can take solace in the fact that Evans once admitted, famously, that the 29 Random House books that made the New York Times "notable books" of 1993 list collectively lost $600,000.) Evans grooved on (self-spun) controversy, and 1997 had its fair share of it. Esquire's literary editor, Will Blythe, quit in protest after then-editor Ed Kosner killed a David Leavitt short story because advertisers objected to its homosexual content. Romance novelist Janet Dailey admitted that three of her books included passages plagiarized from competitor Nora Roberts, the romance industry's hottest writer (no wonder you thought all that stuff sounded the same). And Salman Rushdie and John le Carré pounded the crud out of each other in the letters section of London's Guardian newspaper. (Rushdie to le Carré: "illiterate, pompous ass." Le Carré to Rushdie: "self-canonizing, arrogant colonialist.") The Rushdie-le Carré feud started when le Carré published a Guardian piece in which he defended himself against allegations that his most recent novel, "The Tailor of Panama," was anti-Semitic. The essay enraged Rushdie, who dashed off a letter saying he'd be more sympathetic to le Carré if "he had not been so ready to join an earlier campaign of vilification against a fellow writer." According to Rushdie, when he became the subject of an Iranian fatwa, or death order, in 1989, le Carré "eagerly, and rather pompously, joined forces with my assailants. It would be gracious if he were to admit that he understands the nature of the Thought Police a little better now." The letters went ping-ponging back and forth for a week or so, giving U.K. newspaper editors a respite from the post-Diana doldrums. Le Carré responded: "Rushdie's way with the truth is as self-serving as ever. I never joined his assailants. Nor did I take the easy path of proclaiming Rushdie to be a shining innocent. My position was that there is no law in life or nature that says that great religions may be insulted with impunity." Rushdie got off what sounded like the last word: "Every time he opens his mouth, he digs himself into a deeper hole." This year, like every year, there were books by well-regarded writers that didn't seem up to their usual standards, either critically or commercially. Among them in 1997: E. Annie Proulx's "Accordion Crimes," Paul Auster's "Hand to Mouth," Allan Gurganus' "Plays Well With Others" and Carol Shield's "Larry's Party." But they seemed like aberrations. In general, 1997 offered myriad reasons to believe. Fine first novels by Charles Frazier ("Cold Mountain") and Arundhati Roy ("The God of Small Things") won the National Book Award and Booker Prize, respectively. Among the other writers who made impressive debuts were Arthur Golden ("Memoirs of a Geisha"), Alex Garland ("The Beach"), Kirsten Bakis ("The Lives of the Monster Dogs") and Steve Lattimore ("Circumnavigations"). A slew of old favorites returned with work that ranked with their best. Those books included Robert Stone's "Bear and His Daughter," Don DeLillo's "Underworld," Diane Johnson's "Le Divorce," Edna O'Brien's "Down By the River," John Banville's "The Untouchable," Muriel Spark's "Reality and Dreams" and Richard Russo's "Straight Man." And happily, small presses seemed stronger than ever: If you missed Ellen Ullman's "Close to the Machine" (City Lights), Eileen Whitfield's "Pickford," David Haynes' "All-American Dream Dolls" (Milkweed) or Barbara Gowdy's "Mister Sandman" (Steerforth), to name just three, it's not too late to pick them up for Christmas. SALON | Dec. 24, 1997 What were the best and worst books of 1997? Join the discussion in Table Talk. A L S O The worst books of 1997 By Dwight Garner Our critics pick the worst, and the most overrrated, titles of 1997