William Gibson's The Seesaw Log … is a blow-by-blow, cut-by-cut account of an ordeal that occupied two years of the author's life and left him, at the end, financially enriched and spiritually depleted. In short, it is a success story. At the same time it is a study of defeat. In the course of a hundred and forty pages, the rugged-individualist theory of art, which regards the author's intentions as sacrosanct, is eroded and finally overwhelmed by the rugged collectivism of an industry in which nothing is more sacred than the will of the audience. Per se, the struggle is old stuff. The cry of the betrayed dramatist ("That's not my play!") is among the more easily identifiable night sounds of Broadway, and if the theme of ideals versus commercialism were to be banished from literature today, a tidy heap of American writers would be out of work tomorrow...