Books: I Am Curious (Irving)

THE SEVEN MINUTES by Irving Wallace. 607 pages. Simon & Schuster. $7.50.

As a rule, the effect of Irving Wallace's books is indirectly proportional to his reader's lack of information and sophistication. The Seven Minutes, a turgid, untitillating novel about an obscenity trial, is no exception. It is a book for people who don't know much about pornography but who know what they like.

The basic situation pits a politically ambitious but honest California district attorney against an idealistic, pipe-smoking lawyer who is defending a bookseller accused of selling obscene matter. The matter in question is The Seven Minutes, a novel that records the thoughts of a woman while she is enjoying intercourse. "Filth!" cry the D.A., the church and civilian smut-busters. "Art," intones the defense and assorted experts. "Shame," says the reader who recognizes that Wallace fails to show an awareness of the 1966 Supreme Court ruling on Fanny Hill. The decision stated that a book offending community standards could be proscribed only if it was found to be "utterly without redeeming social value." Had Wallace let this fact into his fabrication, the case of The Seven Minutes would have lost nearly all the artificial relevance the author so strenuously pumped into it. Instead he is content to conclude with incontestable banalities —among them the assertion that books are vital to civilization and honest men can have disagreements about them.