Sales soar once readers get wind of book

As far as I know, the taboo word “fart” appeared in the Detroit Free Press for the first time in this story I wrote for the January 24, 1992 Freep.

I’m re-running this article, with permission from the Free Press, in order to lay a foundation for tomorrow’s story, one that didn’t appear in the Free Press, though not by my choosing.

Keep in mind that the story below was published 16 years ago.

The sole purpose of these stories is to amuse.

— JT

Headline: SALES SOAR ONCE READERS GET WIND OF NEW BOOK

Sub-Head:

Byline: JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Pub-Date: 1/24/1992

Memo:

Correction:

Text: Customers at some Borders Books stores have been sidling up to the cash register with a humble tan volume whose title they hesitate to speak.

The book is “It’s a Gas.” And, presumably so it couldn’t be mistaken for
a report on automobile fuels, the two University of Michigan profs who wrote it gave the work a plain-talk subtitle: “A Study of Flatulence.”

English professor Eric Rabkin and medical school pathologist Eugene
Silverman left the first 20 copies of “Gas” ($9.95) at the State Street store
in Ann Arbor a few days before Christmas. The next day they got a call; the
store needed more.

“They’ve been flying off the shelves,” says Sharon Gambin, assistant
manager. The first-edition printing of 1,000 copies is nearly gone.

“It’s a funny book, it’s reasonably intelligently written and it’s pretty
much the definitive work at the moment,” says George Tattersfield, a book
buyer for the store.

While the publisher, tiny Xenos Books of Riverside, Calif., struggles to
bring out 2,000 more copies, the writers are plotting ways to locally print
another 5,000 or even 10,000 more.

It may not be surprising that a book brazenly claiming it’s the be-all and
end-all of flatulence would prove popular. What’s more surprising is that it
finally found a publisher.

Or, as it turned out, that a publisher found the book.

Rabkin and Silverman wrote “Gas” 14 years ago and found an agent, but
publishers shunned the book. Well, that’s not quite right. Rabkin says the duo often got letters from editors who enjoyed reading the book. It’s just that publishers couldn’t quite bring themselves to print it.

For 14 years, not much happened. Discouraged, Rabkin and Silverman worked on other projects.

Then last spring, by accident, things changed. At a science fiction
conference in California, Rabkin was regaling some friends about his book’s
fate when his friend Gary Kern walked in.

Kern recalls, “I heard him talking, but he didn’t mention what the book
was about.”

Kern, a playwright and classical music disc jockey, had published a handful
of books in small numbers under the logo of Xenos Books. Until now, he has never had a money-maker.

But Kern heard Rabkin explaining, “I’ve got this chapter on anthropology
and the way they do it, and I’ve got a dictionary and we’ve got the word in
every language.”

Kern interrupted: “What are you talking about?”

“My fart book,” Rabkin said. “I can’t get anybody to publish it.”

Thanks to Silverman, the book has more than amusement value, Rabkin says.

“Everything is put in a humorous way, but in the first chapter we present all
that is known medically about the care, feeding and cure of farting,” Rabkin
says.

“Did you know,” the preface asks, “that 10 percent of the population have
chronic, excessive flatulence for bona fide medical reasons and that these
people can be helped by simply changing their diet?”

But the book’s chief interest is the way it cuts against the grain, rips
an old taboo, lets fly at icons.

“We all do it, but we can’t talk about it,” the authors complain.

The book, 164 pages, provides illustrations of flatus from the
imaginations of Pieter Brueghel, Aubrey Beadsley and others, literary
examples by Aristophanes, Mark Twain, Emile Zola and others.

Some fellow U-M faculty members scorn flatology. Says John Woodford,
editor of Michigan Today, “There are professors who say it’s a good thing
he’s (Rabkin) got tenure.”

Why such ill wind against a few molecules of gas? In Western culture,
Rabkin says, gas-passing somehow got a low- class rap.

In a lot of other places, it’s OK. Before meals, 19th- Century Brahmins
— Hindus of the highest caste — used to say, “Glory to the noisy ebullitions
which escape above and below.”

“In some cultures,” says the book, “people pass a happy afternoon in
contesting who can pass the most gas, but in our culture we don’t even have a simple acceptable word for it.”

Even science has cut the subject. It’s technically hard enough to collect
human gas for study, Rabkin says. Add the disgust many people feel toward mere mention of it and you have a sadly neglected specialty.

The book was Silverman’s idea. “It’s a dynamite subject,” he told a
gathering of friends. “Everybody does it, people obviously have strong
feelings about it.”

Oh, and, “I think it’d sell.”

And that’s the bottom line.

Caption:

U-M English professor Eric Rabkin wrote “It’s a Gas” with a
colleague from the medical school.

Illustration: PHOTO PAULINE LUBENS

Edition: METRO FINAL

Section: WWL

Page: 3F

Keywords: ; BOOK; REVIEW

Disclaimer: