THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411090327
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG, VA. LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
The Virginia Tech students in Marshall Fishwick's ``Functions of Popular Culture'' class opened their textbooks this semester to a pleasant surprise: They were up-to-date. Even O.J. Simpson's mid-June Bronco ride made the final chapter.
Fishwick, Virginia Tech's pop culture guru, recognizes a tectonic shift in his field when he sees it on television, especially when it's rolling slowly down a Los Angeles freeway and shown live on all the major networks.
Back home in New York that night, Fishwick's editor, Nancy Surridge, had turned to her husband.
``You know, I have an author who's going to want to put that in his book,'' she said.
She was right. And he did, thanks to the magic of a new textbook market that weds emerging technology to the dogged survival instincts of the print media.
``Go, and Catch a Falling Star'' is Fishwick's new book, one of the first in a new area of textbook publishing. The book is something between a magazine and a hardback.
``Print is the medium of continuity,'' says Fishwick, a former Washington & Lee University professor who helped inspire pioneering writer Tom Wolfe. ``We think we're through with print, but we're not.''
Surridge co-directs American Heritage Custom Publishing, a 2-year-old offshoot of Forbes Inc. that has jumped into the new quick-turnaround textbook market with the aid of desktop publishing technology.
She spoke excitedly about Fishwick's revisions for his second-semester class, to be shipped in mid-December with an update on the Simpson trial.
``We know publishers aren't updating books quickly enough, and we know professors want to keep current,'' she said.
Fishwick's is only one of a few of the new textbooks created with desktop publishing software. Selling for $28.80 in the University Bookstore, it's a little on the steep side - but the cost should go down as more professors at more universities buy it for their classes, Surridge said. Four other professors are using Fishwick's book. by CNB