- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K That Gandhi/Apple ad: Nefarious co-optation of a heroic figure, or an improvement over advertising's worship of athletes and rock stars? Discuss it in the Media section of Table Talk. - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Under the covers By James Poniewozik Holiday food mags push turkey porn (11/19/97) Sex with the perfect stranger By James Surowiecki A sex magazine for perfect strangers -- men and women (11/18/97) Wow! It fits in a box! By Daniel Radosh Old media's dumb-as-a-post gushing over new media conceals a secret disdain (11/17/97) Buy buy love The Robb Report for the affluent lifestyle By David Futrelle (11/14/97) Doing the right-wing shuffle By Eric Alterman The big right-wing magazine shuffle (11/13/97) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MEDIA CIRCUS ARCHIVES

_______big bucks - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > F O R_O L D_B O O K S WITH THIS YEAR'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARD, CHARLES FRAZIER WINS -- AND SO DO BOOK COLLECTORS. BY DWIGHT GARNER | When Charles Frazier's earthy, decidedly old-fashioned first novel "Cold Mountain" beat out Don DeLillo's "Underworld" and three other books Tuesday night to win this year's National Book Award for fiction, many in the book world expressed some mild shock and surprise. (Who is this bearded whippersnapper?) But not America's book collectors. They'd been betting on Frazier all along. From the moment "Cold Mountain" was released this spring, it has basked in the glow of almost-otherworldly buzz. Strong reviews and good word-of-mouth translated into sales, and Atlantic Monthly Press' first printing -- 25,000 copies -- quickly vanished from bookstores. It's impossible to know how many of those copies were snapped up by collectors who saw a good thing coming, but as early as this summer antiquarian booksellers began advertising signed copies for $50, then for $75, then for $100. When one bookseller recently tried to pass along a signed first edition of "Cold Mountain" for $150, Robin H. Smiley, the publisher of a monthly book collector's magazine called Firsts, felt compelled to step in and dismiss some of the smoke -- in much the same way that Alan Greenspan might try to soothe frazzled nerves after a particularly fevered day on Wall Street. "We are automatically skeptical about the long-term strength of new books at premium prices; time tends to bring them back to earth," Smiley intones in the magazine's November issue. "But it is always pleasant to have purchased such a book before it became a sensation." Nice try, Robin. Now that "Cold Mountain" has garnered what is arguably America's most prestigious literary prize, that rumbling noise you hear is the sound of used booksellers rushing to jack up the penciled sticker price inside their few remaining copies. The stock of "Cold Mountain" can only soar. The underground market in Charles Frazier first editions is indicative of the growing interest in book collecting in recent years. Americans love collectibles, and bookish Americans are apparently no exception. As each succeeding issue of Smiley's Firsts magazine indicates, there is almost no writer too young (Elizabeth McCracken) or too minor (Rufus King) or too commercial (Michael Crichton) to be actively hoarded. The price that these writers' books can command has as much, if not more, to do with their rarity as it does with their literary value. What collectors generally seek out is a first edition copy of a writer's first -- not necessarily their best -- book. Other things can help boost a book's price: Is it in good condition? Is it signed? Was there a small first printing? Is there anything unusual about it, like maybe a copy of Jesse Jackson's autobiography inscribed to David Duke? The more obscure a writer's first few books are, the more chance they have to become valuable to collectors once he or she becomes well-known. Take Cormac McCarthy, for example -- a writer to whom Frazier is often compared. Until 1992, when McCarthy's novel "All the Pretty Horses" won the National Book Award and propelled him into the acknowledged first rank of American novelists, copies of his earlier novels crowded used bookstore shelves and could be had for a couple of dollars. After "All the Pretty Horses," that changed rapidly. First editions of McCarthy's first novel, "Orchard Keeper" (1965), now sell for as much as $2,500. N E X T+P A G E+| The Blue Book of books