BOOKS

BOOKS

Vote For The Worst of Everything!

Having discovered, much to our embarrassment, that the Sylvia Topp involved in the production! of As They Were is none other than Tuli Kupferberg's wife, we were not at all surprised to find in our mail one morning a copy of Tuli's latest tome, Listen to the Mockingbird and the skeleton key to the latest CREEM contest, or quiz, or whatever it is. No prizes this time, friends. Just a chance to change history.

Listen to the Mockingbird is a collection 'of TulVs song parodies, some of which are brilliant. We remember "Fuck with Fire" in a different version from Kupferberg's brilliantly obscene 1967 play, "Phoc Nam. " Anyway, after having seen what he could do with a bunch of old photographs, if you want to see Tuli instill some new life into old songs, Mockingbird is available for $1.50 from Times Change Press, cjo Monthly Review Press, 116 W. 14th St., New York; N.-Y. 10011. We like "What a Freud We Have In Sigmund, " and "If You Had the Luck of the Jewish. "

The questionnaire which follows is the framework of TulVs next book, The Worst of Everything. IVs the follow-up, we guess, to One Thousand One Ways to Beat the Draft and One Thousand One Way& to Live Without Working. This is your chance to become a creative statistic. Send replies to:

Tuli Kupferberg 381 E. 10th Street New York, N.Y. 10009

What Is The:

1. Worst Sound

2. Worst Smell

3. Worst Color

4. Worst Taste

5. Worst Food

6. Worst Vegetable

7. Worst Beer

8. Worst brand of Liquor

9. Worst Restaurant

10. Worst Joke (use separate sheet)

11. Most unlucky Number

12. Worst Curse Word

13. Worst Car

14. Worst Toilet Paper

15. Worst Country

16. Worst City

17. Worst Religion

18. Worst Newspaper

19. Worst Magazine

20. Worst Book

21. Worst Author

22. Worst Rock & Roll Group

23. Worst song

24. Worst singer

25. Worst TV show

26. Worst TV commercial

27. Worst Actor or Actress

28. Ugliest Personality

29. Worst dressed Person

30. Worst Clothing Fad

31. Worst single Event

32. Worst US president

33. Worst figure in Public Office

34. Worst Government

35. Worst Crime

36. Worst Criminal

37. Worst Job

38. Worst Disease

39. Worst Hour of the Day

40. Worst Day of the Year

41. Worst Year in History

42. Worst Hotel

43. Worst Movie

44. Worst Sport

45. Two or three Worst Problems

facing us today

46. Worst Lay

If you would like to nominate anything or anyone for a category not included, please feel free.

THE WATERGATE HEARINGS New York Times (Bantam)

THE WATERGATE FILE Bushel, Robbins, Vitka 8t Nordland (Flash)

CONTRACT ON THE PRESIDENT John Crosby (Dell)

One of the best things about Watergate is that is has provided succor for

out real national weakness: data obsession. Only a nation that is statistically gluttonous could have invented a sport like baseball, or have written The Census into its constitution.

But ultimately, statistics lose their fascination quickly. The Watergate Hearings is almost nine hundred pages of Times Roman 8 point type. Reading it is like trying to thumb through a dictionary. The great thing about the New York Times, of course, is that it publishes history before it is useful. What is this term paper for? Other people's term paper bibliographies, I guess.

The Watergate FUe serves the same purpose, except that it looks like one of Hunter Thompson's too4ong take-outs in Rolling Stone, The four who put it together work for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia's underground newspaper, The Drummer, and Philadelphia Rad-Rock station, WMMR. But, where the Times is, as usual, scrupulously non-committal (which is not the same thing as objective), The Watergate File knows who the good guys (the press, the investigators, Siroka, the Senators) and bad guys (everyone else) are.

But neither of these books adds anything to the delicious paranoia, on which all Watergate addicts feed. No new villainsp no new horrors, just a reiteration of what we were already afraid of.

Contract on the President hasn't a thing to do With Watergate, except everything. It is the story of a President who declares war on the Mafia in covert fashion. It has to be covert war, because the FBI are in the thrall of the International Mega-Criminal Conspiracy. The other participants are for those who've read it to know, and for you to find out.

What's bone-chilling is that Contract is plausible. The infiltration runs so deep, it becomes a Watergate parallel. Would anyone be surprised to discover that Henry Kissinger, say, was being bought off by somebody's henchmen,

The Prez in his Grammy Awards performance of "Doctor My Eyes."

Six panels from "Ten Gears Forward Tulsa's Northward Overland Blood & Sand Blues" by Bill Bergeron.

or was running a crew of cut-throats himself? Or that E. Howard Hunt was now using John Crosby as a pen-name? You could have nightmares for weeks,

Dave Marsh

OFF THE WALL

Robert Christgau's Any Old Way You Choose It, a collection of his writings in various publications include ing this one, has been published by Penguin Books ($2.50). We recommend it wholeheartedly. A full length review will appear next month.

PRAIRIE STATE BLUES by Bill Bergeron (Chicago Review Press):: Many of the comic strips and "graphic tales" included in this collection originally appeared in CREEM. They appeared here because they give a glimpse of a sordid Salamander suburban swamp that we had no idea ever existed before seeing, them. Bergeron is a little dark and dense, if you're used to Zap artists, but he's coming from an even weirder, darker place than almost any of them. Highly recommended.

THE BOOK OF WEIRD by Barbara Byfield (Doubleday/Dolphin):: An encyclopedia of witches, elves and what-

not; only for those who haven't outgrown their cosmic adolescence'.

JANIS by David Dalton (Paperback Library):: Dalton's book on the dear dead girl should not have been the best, but since the others were nothing short of atrocious, it is. In a $1.50 edition, it's one of the most valuable resources on rock. It includes a large photo section, and music and lyrics on 17 of Jams" hits. \

MAVERICK INVENTOR: MY TURBULENT YEARS AT CBS by Peter Goldmark (Saturday Review Press):: The autobiography of an inventor — the long-playing record, early versions of color TV and home video, and various et ceteras — with a vision. Good inventor, ok book, poor vision.

Dave Marsh

EXTERMINATOR! by William S. Burroughs (Viking):: The same old buttfuck, razored back thru the same old hardly mind-manifesting avantgarters up Willy's junk-faded sleeve. What it really is is all the cannabisdribbles he managed to con hightone rags into printing thru the late 60s, slapped together and called a "novel." Ignore this latest meander down a windy street from an old fart who hasn't had a new idea since the Fifties, and get

and (re)read Junkie, which has just been reissued in new paperback edition with Nam vet nodding onna cover.

THE FOURTH ANGEL by John Rechy (Viking):: Four nasty delinquents cruise for vaguely Mansonoid mischief. Mildly diverting, but Rechy's descriptions of peoples" acid trips are strictly from 1968 potboilers.

THE PREACHERS by James Morris (St. Martin's Press):: At last, a book that tells what cabbage Kathryn Kullman came from! Not to mention Rev. Ike and Garner Ted Armstrong. Morris" deficiencies as a writer (somehow you figure this stuff should have way more impact) are sufficiently compensated by ,inherent fascination of subject matter, and ti.j whole is the next best thing to your nearest Sunday morning AM dial.

Lester Bangs

AMERICANA by Don Delillo (Pocket Books):: Delillo's style is intellectual tough-guyism, IQ and muscles. Americana is an intense but wearying novel that finally picks up when the TV executive protagonist, on his way to Arizona to make a documentary on Indians, quits his films and his own Godardian vision.

Donald Jennings