In a season of "literary all-stars" -- with new books out or on the way from Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, Philip Roth's American Pastoral, which lands in the #15 fiction spot, seems to be establishing itself as an early favorite. The Houghton Mifflin title landed in stores last week; a third trip back to press due shortly will bring the in-print total to 100,000. Outstanding review attention (PW's boxed and starred review termed it "Roth's most mature novel, powerful and universally relevant") and strong word of mouth in the book community, says HM trade and division publisher Wendy Strothman, are "helping the book fly." As to the author's well known reluctance to give interviews, Strothman adds that "he's promoting this book in the best way possible -- by writing his next one."