DYING IN THE SUN

Wheelchairs, sequins, S.S. and Medicare, plastic noseguards, plastic everything, taped laughter, bottled sunshine, Florida Fountain-blue skies, and people, people, people -- 14.5 over 65 getting older, older unless they die -- a coronary here, a suicide there. Donn Pearce's (Cool Hand Luke) book stings like a skin peel and is a kind of new journalese impressionism -- real life candids shuttling by like news clips. Of nursing homes and hospitals, model homes, mobile homes, a nudist camp called the Sexy Senile Citizens' Club, or as a welcome retreat from those escalating funeral parlors -- Requiem Associates -- where if you're lucky enough to make a connection, you might be able to arrange to ""die at a moment of choice."" An appalling and just as fascinating look at our ""geriatric Disneyland"" -- a fix on one chronological and regional area of American life we would be unwise to overlook. . . . Fly who? Will the little lady with the lucky number please stand up -- if she can.