NEW YORK - As the fall season approaches, the book world is still searching for this year's great American novel.
"Looking across the landscape, there were supposed to be some literary novels that blew everybody away. But for various reasons, they didn't quite perform," says Jonathan Burnham, vice president and publisher of HarperCollins, which released last year's National Book Award winner, Lily Tuck's "The News From Paraguay." "I think everyone is still waiting for the book that everyone greets as the big literary book," says John Sterling, president and publisher of Henry Holt. "People thought it would be a strong year for fiction, but it hasn't turned out that way." With the presidential election over, Sterling and others had expected fiction to reclaim the attention given to topical books. But anticipated novels such as Michael Cunningham's "Specimen Days" and Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" received mixed reviews at best and the fall doesn't look any better. Publishers and booksellers struggled to think of a book with the kind of word of mouth that spread last year for Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" and Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead," which went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. One hope is E.L. Doctorow's "The March," a novel based on Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's bloody campaign through the South during the Civil War. "Doctorow's book is possible," Sterling said of the Random House release. "I'm hearing very good advance word on that one. It would be great to see something break through." But Sessalee Hensley, fiction buyer for Barnes & Noble, Inc., says, "Nothing's going to be `Gilead' this year." With the public still edgy from war and an uncertain economy, fiction continues to serve more as a means for escaping the world than for engaging it. The big books have been thrillers, such as "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Historian," and the fantasy blockbuster " Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Not only have established literary authors disappointed critics, no major new literary voices have emerged. "I think a lot of editors will tell you that 2004 and 2005 haven't been very good for fiction acquisitions. There weren't a lot of huge auctions or books that publishers got really excited about," says Geoff Shandler, editor in chief of Little, Brown and Co. "I'm afraid I must agree with that," says HarperCollins' Burnham, who adds that the number of "standout literary debuts have been disappointing." Notes Sterling: "There were no dazzling debuts." Plenty of fiction should at least sell well, including works from Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, Jennifer Weiner and Candace Bushnell. Courtroom master Scott Turow looks back to World War II in "Ordinary Heroes." Robert Hicks' "The Confederate Widow," another Civil War novel, could become the year's big fiction debut. Anne Rice's "Christ the Lord" may be the most controversial release, a story about Jesus from an author known for more pagan narratives. The oddest could be the late Marlon Brando's "Fan-Tan," a pirate adventure the actor worked on in the 1970s. Other fiction includes Salman Rushdie's "Shalimar the Clown," Zadie Smith's "On Beauty" and Nadine Gordimer's "Get a Life." "There's lots of new titles in the fall, but it's hard to really point to a real blockbuster either in the commercial of literary category," says Michael Spinozzi, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Borders Group Inc., the superstore chain. "The fall looks thinner than it has in previous years." In nonfiction, Al Franken is back on the attack with "The Truth (With Jokes)," but otherwise political books will focus more on policy than on personalities. Jonathan Kozol's "Shame of the Nation" denounces racism in public education, while Barbara Ehrenreich endures the job market in "Bait and Switch." Memoirs will come from the famous and nearly famous. "Dean and Me" is Jerry Lewis' loving portrait of his old partner, Dean Martin. Julie Powell's "Julie & Julia" is the writer's efforts to master the recipes of Julia Child, based on postings from Powell's blog. "The criteria signing `Julie and Julia' were very similar to what we would use for any book proposal: There was a strong voice, there was a freshness and a novelty to what she was doing," says Little Brown's Shandler. "A great blogger is like an excellent guitar player, but the book is like playing piano. Bloggers have a head start because they know music, but they still have to make the adjustment." ------------------------ Yahoo! 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