Entitlement Publishing

The Wind Done Gone, by Alice Randall (Houghton Mifflin, 210 pp., $22)

‘NO man is a hypocrite in his pleasures,” said Dr. Johnson, right as always. As proof of his point, I offer in evidence Gone with the Wind. Never has a middlebrow bodice-ripper been more widely reviled by highbrow critics, yet ordinary folks continue to buy it, read it, and like it, no matter how often they’re told they shouldn’t do any of the above. I paid a visit to amazon.com not long ago to see how this book—the winner of the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for fiction—was doing, and found that the paperback edition ranked 1,650th in sales that day, a figure neither surprisingly high (The Catcher in the Rye was 61st) nor humiliatingly low (The Godfather was 8,030th). In fact, I’d say it was just about right for a book that has been selling steadily for six decades, and seems likely to keep on selling for at least six more.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

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The Wind Done Gone, by Alice Randall (Houghton Mifflin, 210 pp., $22)

‘NO man is a hypocrite in his pleasures,” said Dr. Johnson, right as always. As proof of his point, I offer in evidence Gone with the Wind. Never has a middlebrow bodice-ripper been more widely reviled by highbrow critics, yet ordinary folks continue to buy it, read it, and like it, no matter how often they’re told they shouldn’t do any of the above. I paid a visit to amazon.com not long ago to see how this book—the winner of the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for fiction—was doing, and found that the paperback edition ranked 1,650th in sales that day, a figure neither surprisingly high (The Catcher in the Rye was 61st) nor humiliatingly low (The Godfather was 8,030th). In fact, I’d say it was just about right for a book that has been selling steadily for six decades, and seems likely to keep on selling for at least six more.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.