REVIEWS
The Naked and the Dead
Part I
"It is written in such a way as to confound
any doubt about the smell and touch and taste of war,
at least of WWII. The details of fighting
on this island in the South Pacific are so exact
that one would never question that this
was the way it was."
Part II
"It serves to remind one
of the words of Ignacio Silone, who said that
a good novelist must be willing torture his characters
unmercifully."

Sex, Drugs & the Twinkie Murders
"He trained himself how to write clearly,
and he does his homework. In that way,
we could say that Krassner represents
the New York Times of the acid set."

War & Politics By Other Means
"Scates is, thus, a reporter of the old school.
He is honest and he is driven ---
and he is appallingly courageous."

Great Reviews of the Past
What the Cults Believe
"By hanging their fellow theomaniacs
on a meathook marked Cult, they are forgetting
their own controversial past, most certainly
the gentle charity of their founder, Dwight Moody."

BRIEF REVIEWS
Decoding Soviet Espionage in America,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and
The Race to the White Continent

ARTICLES
Three Eulogies by Michael Ingall
Billy Wong
"At one sitting, he could eat a large bag of Fritos,
a large bag of Doritos, and a large bag of Cheetos.
All this before supper, which consisted of a TV dinner
and 8 cigarettes. He was a challenge to the case manager
who assisted him twice a day in shopping, nutrition, hygiene, etc."
Peggy Donnelly
"Toward the end,
whenever she would speak, she would cough painfully and uncontrollably.
A priest, visiting her, said to her that it must be hard not to be able
to speak to anyone the way she wanted. She whispered,
At least I can talk to God."
Richard Casparian
"Richard --- everyone from judges
to mass murderers called him Richard, although
he always announced himself on the phone as,
This is Casparian--- would always take the worst cases,
the unwinnable cases, because it was
the right thing to do."

READINGS
The Whores Are Always Smiling
"Would we, in these enlightened times, call a plump friend
Gordito --- the little fat one?
Would we ever say to worker Manuel, the one with the wandering eye,
Hey, Cross-Eyes, come over here?"

Crossing the Bar
"They come ever closer, mangling mirrors,
tearing away trim, rubbing off paint, mashing one fender
against another. All the while the two drivers soldier on,
stony-faced, practicing the Manhattan visage,
looking neither to one side nor the other."