THE VIEW FROM THE BRICKYARD

Elizabeth Mehren’s “The Case of the Bookless Book Party: A Cautionary Tale� (July 1) describes well the problems publishers face when an “author� like former attorney general and White House chief of staff Edwin Meese poops out on a big-advance book deal--and places the blame right where it belongs, on the publishers themselves.

But it’s more than just a procedural issue, involving inadequate book proposals (“. . . a little wisp of smoke of a book . . . a gleam in the eye . . .�) or a “buying frenzy.� The lost advance cuts right to the bone of what’s gone wrong with book publishing today.

What is a book? It’s a bound set of pages, filled (one hopes) with words strung coherently into sentences, paragraphs and chapters so as to entertain, stimulate or educate readers. Big-advance books often aren’t meant to be read at all. They aren’t even meant to be opened. Instead, they hit the stores like glossily wrapped bricks, with just about the same literary value as a brick.

If you’re in the brick business, as opposed to the book business, you’ll start dealing with “authors� whose only concern is their own eminence--moral crooks, in short. And when you deal with such crooks, you will get stiffed.

LAWRENCE HENRY

BEVERLY HILLS