A lighthearted look at book titles. It discusses books that were almost called something else - Peter Benchley's "Jaws" has as one of its working titles "Leviathan Rising"; books whose titles have become a household word -- Bel Kaufman's "Up the Down Staircase"; and books whose titles the authors refused to change -- "Smilla's Sense of Snow," by Peter Hoeg. It also discusses what certain titles mean and why some authors consider titles essential parts of their books.
Mostly though, Mr. Bernard, an editor at The Book-of-the-Month Club, makes the point that titles come about in curious ways. Edward Albee, for instance, saw the message "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" written on the mirror of a Greenwich Village bar. As Mr. Bernard puts it, "There's no lesson to be drawn here, just a kind of respectful puzzlement at the creative pro-cess." That process is lesson enough.
"Now All We Need Is A Title: Famous Book Titles and How They Got That Way," by Andre Bernard. 127 pages. New York: W.W. Norton. $15.95