'What You Can Do to Avoid AIDS,' the first of three books that Magic Johnson has agreed to write or collaborate on for Random House Inc., has been written and the promotional campaign is under way to get the $3.99 paperback to its target audience: high school students and their parents and educators. 'In the Beginning' has more entries overall, but there are several on each page and the books are listed immediately after the entry, so it's pretty easy to cheat.

'Great First Lines' is structured more like a guessing game, with one opening sentence per page and the list of titles in the back. The books overlap on 95 opening lines, including the expected classics, such as 'Call me Ishmael' and 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' and the less expected, such as 'You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning,' from Jay McInerney's 'Bright Lights, Big City.' Wiley said that of the 261 books submitted for consideration, these 5 were the 'strongest books that called to us the loudest.' He said that the judges made their list after three hours of deliberations, without considering the 'political correctness of the choices.'Ĭhronicle Books in San Francisco has come out with 'In the Beginning: Great First Lines From Your Favorite Books,' with 530 entries collected by Hans Bauer, and Fawcett Columbine is soon to publish 'Great First Lines: Literature's Most Memorable First Sentences,' which has the additional taunting subtitle 'How Many Can You Identify?,' a 200-entry collection edited by Celina Spiegel and Peter Kupfer.

And I said to the others that it looks like the old Supreme Court: all white and all men.'īut Mr. 'We looked at each other with sort of scared expressions when we came down to the final list. 'I'm glad there were two women judges with me,' said Richard Wiley, who with Joy Williams and Doris Grumbach chose the finalists. The award was founded by writers to honor their peers. Knopf), by Allan Gurganus, and 'The Almanac Branch' (Linden Press/Simon & Schuster), by Bradford Morrow. The nominees are: 'Mao II' (Viking), by Don DeLillo 'Frog' (British American Publishing), by Stephen Dixon, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award 'Extraordinary People' (HarperCollins), by Paul Gervais 'White People' (Alfred A. This year's PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction will carry on a tradition that began when the literary prize was first given in 1980: the winner will have been written by a man.īooks by five male authors were selected as the nominees for the 1992 award, guaranteeing that the $7,500 prize will go for the 13th time to a man.

Polly Vaughn by Barry Moser