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Some weeks ago, I read Bob Zmuda's biography of one of the strangest comics of the century. I was somewhat excited when galley proofs of the book arrived. Andy Kaufman Revealed (Little, Brown, $24).
Kaufman, who died in his 30s of lung cancer (and he'd never smoked), remains a cloudy, insubstantial character throughout the text. Zmuda, Kaufman's writer and self-proclaimed best friend, has created a book that irritates but doesn't illuminate. Warning: Jim Carrey (a comic actor who seems to be almost as weird as Kaufman) stars in the film biography coming out this fall. I'll stay home, thank you. Short Takes Only a few journalists may recall the name of Stanley Walker, who was city editor of the long deceased New York Herald Tribune in the 1930s. Johns Hopkins University Press recently has published two trade paperback editions of Walker books. Both books are marked by graceful and highly entertaining prose. In City Editor as Walker describes what it was like to be boss to a city room staffed by some of the best reporters of the era. You don't have to be a newspaperman to enjoy this delightful tome. The Night Club Era winds its even more colorful trek through the gin mills that prospered in the times of Prohibition, which never worked and often permitted crafty club owners to get rich. Under the Bombs (University Press of Kentucky, $18) impresses with its reasoned, highly researched and fascinating report on the German home front during the worst days of World War II. Author Earl R. Buck has written a sober, sometimes harrowing account of the victims of the Third Reich, in this case the German people. Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad (University of Kentucky Press, $18 paperback) relates the fascinating true-life story of a "petticoat abolitionist" who assists slaves in reaching freedom. Much of the story unfolds in Kentucky, Ripley and Aberdeen, Ohio to the north, and Lexington, Ky. on the southern end. Exhaustibly researched, this book should delight anyone with an interest in the era not long before the Civil War. Patrick Redmond's Something Dangerous (Hyperion, $23.95) has been hyped heavily by its U.S. publisher as one of the scariest books imaginable. Redmond's first novel, a big hit in Great Britain, is set in a British boys' boarding school, one of the most ancient settings for skullduggery. Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Seven New Titles: Something for Everybody in Contemporary Fiction is owned by Robert Powers. Permission to republish Seven New Titles: Something for Everybody in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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