Sock It To Me

Diversionary reading that'll fit into footwear.

By Vance Lehmkuhl

I know, stockings mean Christmas — but if you want an analogue for Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, you'll have to make it up for yourself, because I have no experience with them.

I do, however, have experience with Christmas-day lull — the time after the main present-opening blitzkrieg but before the day's other activities, like going to visit relatives or (yiii!) having them come to visit. I'm distracted and don't know how much time there is, so I want something extremely frivolous, from which I can be torn at a moment's notice with no regrets whatsoever. That's what these books are perfect for. Each will fit in a stocking, most are under ten bucks, and none makes any pretensions to real significance. As you'd expect, however, some of them are better than others.

And some are worse: Last Chapter and Worseby Gary Larson (Andrews & McMeel, $9.95) lives up to half its title by collecting the last pathetic gasps of Larson's once-brilliant Far Side cartoon — the cartoons that convinced him to stop drawing altogether. Here we have the same old standbys — scientists, chickens, cowboys, clowns, Satan — but the jokes are far more convoluted. It's not awful, it's mediocre, which for the Far Side is awful.

From last to first: Peter Kuper's first Eye of the Beholdercollection (Nantier Beall Minoustchine, $8.95). This cartoon, like Far Side when it started, is unlike any other in existence. In a wordless five panels, we get a series of images which seem somehow related, but whose connection only becomes definite in the last panel — the "beholder" of the previous four. For example, kids making faces, a fat lady sneering, teenagers scratching their heads and laughing: then in the last panel we see the zoo gorilla who is watching all this with a mildly annoyed expression. Not all of the strips follow the "beholder" concept perfectly, and the five-panel format forces an awkward layout, but some of the "jokes" pack an enormous punch. Kuper's style, a vibrant woodcut, fits his simple content perfectly, and he seems to have carved a unique, worthwhile niche for himself.

Another niche-carver is Jon Winokur, collector/editor, whose Portable Curmudgeon has become many a cynic's best friend. In The Rich Are Different(Pantheon, $20), Winokur sets out not just to amass a huge number of quotes and anecdotes by and about the excessively wealthy, but to get at what distinctions of wealth and class mean to us as a society — all this in a book the size of a GameBoy! You will find here not just ridiculously lavish parties and hilariously clueless robber barons, but also dissertations on tax law, an extensive glossary, even a long excerpt from Barlett & Steele. Ironically, the only flaw of this tome on the all-too-rich is that it is too rich itself: Winokur has packed so much into it that it sometimes loses focus, particularly due to the many quotes which turn out to be from works of fiction. There's more than enough comedy and commentary in what actually happens — why add to it?

That question, in fact, could be the credo of Chuck Shepherd, curator of the "News of the Weird" column. Although National Lampoon has been compiling "True Facts" for decades, Shepherd is the modern-day king of the bizarre "real news" story (Roland Sweet trained with him, then split off to do the NewsQuirks column which currently runs in this paper). The Concrete Enema(Andrews & McMeel, $6.95) is probably the best bottom-dollar bargain of the stockingful. Including the title story, there are dozens of stupid crooks, insane inventions, ironic accidents, absurd lawsuits and other Stranger-Than-Fiction gems. There's even a special appearance by L&I head Frank Antico, who cited a topless dancer for exaggerating her bust size.

From the oversized to the microscopic: Furtive Fauna(Ten Speed Press, $7.95) are the "tiny terrors" whom we host with or without our knowing. If you've ever felt too smug about your personal cleanliness, Roger Knutson's "Field Guide to the Creatures Who Live on You" is the perfect antidote. Fleas, ticks, mites, lice, they're all here, explained and differentiated with wit and precision. You'll find out, for instance, that chiggers do not, in fact, burrow into your skin, but chigoes do, and you don't want to know what happens next. Actually, you probably don't want to know most of this stuff (try reading past chapter one without nervously scratching here and there), which is why it makes the perfect gift for any Felix Unger types who think they've managed to achieve an antiseptic environment. Omigod, Felix! Your eyebrows!

On a wider-ranging but less immediately useful level are the bite-size ruminations of David Brinkley collected in Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion(Knopf, $20) — a title he so beautifully illustrated on Election Eve, ignoring his colleagues' warnings that he was on the air while blithely insulting Bill Clinton. Then again, maybe that was a stunt to pump up the buzz on this book. At any rate, there's nothing quite as forceful in these transcribed epilogues to his This Week show, though political animals may enjoy the chance to relive 1981 to 1995 through Brinkley's lens. Given that no essay runs beyond the bottom of a given page, there's not much room for deep thought, but plenty for self-satisfied head-wagging.

"Everyone is Entitled to Everyone's Opinion" might have been the title to the last book here, but instead it is simply called If 2(Villard, $9.95). It's a sequel to the original If, which it seems was enormously popular, consisting solely of "What If?" questions that people can read to each other and stimulate discussion. Since I was only reading this to myself in order to review it, I doubtless missed the full effect: It stimulated no discussion whatsoever. But for ten bucks you could probably buy some pencils and paper and come up with at least half of these questions on your own. I didn't find the ultimate, "If you were a tree, what type would you be?" — maybe it was in the first book — but many are of that ilk. My favorite question, though, is this one: "If you could have prevented one book from ever having been written, what would it be?"

Gee, uh...do you really want to know?