`THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY' PHENOMENON

Once upon a time a business professor having a two-week-long fit of creativity wrote a light romance novel called "The Bridges of Madison County." Three years after it's publication and available only in hardback, "Bridges" has sold a record 18 million copies and at this moment still is the second-best selling novel in the nation.

With the release of the movie of the same name, currently one of the most popular films in the land, Robert James Waller's "Bridges of Madison County" has become an industry all by itself.

Two more books have just been published in connection with the movie. One, titled "The Bridges of Madison County: The Movie," contains dialogue from the film and production photos taken of stars Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.

The other publication is called "The Bridges of Madison County Memory Book." In a case of art and life becoming oddly confused, it offers photographs taken by Eastwood, who plays National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid in the movie. This book also is punctuated with phrases from the movie -- in Dirty Harry's own handwriting.

How all this transpired from a thin volume about a four-day love affair that ends in wistfulness is still a bit of a mystery.

Janet Guess, manager of Waldenbooks in the West Park Mall, attributes the book's success to Oprah Winfrey.

"It was always kind of a sleeper. One person would read it and tell another one. Then he went on `The Oprah Winfrey Show.' She loved it and the whole world started buying it."

Winfrey actually broadcast her program from Cedar Bridge in Madison County in May 1992, one month after the book was published. By August it was on the best-seller list.

The book's length also is an advantage, Guess says. "It's a short read. "Everybody who reads it likes it."

The Cape Girardeau Public Library has six hardback copies and two audio cassette copies of the book. The waiting list to get one is five people-deep.

The book's writing sets it apart from its legion of light romance competitors, says Betty Martin, a reference librarian with the Cape Girardeau Public Library.

"Lots of people read light romances. And people prefer to read writers who write well," she says.

Since writing "Bridges," Waller also has published the novel "Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend," a book of essays and stories titled "Old Songs in a New Cafe," and the novel "Border Music," which also was on the best-seller list until recently.

Waller's newest book, still to be published, is titled "Puerto Vallarta Squeeze."

But none of the other books has received a response even close to Waller's first. Myron Anderson, who stocks mostly paperbacks at Metro News Bookstore, said the hardback book's sales have begun to flag only recently.

"With the movie it should pick up again," he said.

In Janet Guess's words, "`Bridges' is a phenomenon."

For the benefit of the uninitiated few, the book tells the story of a love affair between an itinerant photographer, Kincaid, and farm wife Francesca Johnson, whose husband and children are away at the state fair.

He asks her to come away with him and she is tempted but in the end remains with her family. The affair and the depth of the feelings the two had for each other are discovered by her children only after her death many years later.

Does anyone not like the "Bridges of Madison County"? Sure. The book was ignored until Oprah came along, then was panned by critics.

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau did a sendup of the book in his comic strip "Doonesbury."

More recently, Joseph Farah, writing in the conservative newsletter Dispatches, complained that the central characters have no redeeming values.

"They have no emotional, intellectual or moral qualities that distinguish them as good people. In addition, the story line mocks American values and standards of civility," he writes.

Aaron and Lola Howell, whose farmhouse the movie scouts had chosen as the perfect location for shooting, refused to allow the filming.

"We didn't want to help them make one more movie that glorified adultery," Aaron Howell told Premiere magazine.

But finding and losing of true love -- not adultery -- seem to be what intrigues people most about "The Bridges of Madison County."

Now, couples get married on Roseman Bridge, where Francesca Johnson left a note inviting Robert Kincaid to dinner.

People leave bottles of brandy, a drink the two lovers shared, on the porch of a house near the bridge.

And as the new books illustrate, there's money to be made from romance.

The chamber of commerce has booked nearly 200 coach tours to the bridges of Madison County this summer.