I TOOK A LICKIN' AND KEPT ON TICKIN'

The popular Dixie wisecracker is back this year—not with his usual mixed bag of grumpy newspaper columns but, along with fervent thanks for continued life, a complete account of his latest and scariest illness. Grizzard (b. 1946) lay hospitalized for 27 days in a coma, near death, after major rearranging of his vital giblets. Out of his coma with no apparent brain damage, he reports on how he got into such a parlous state; how he barely survived; and how much his pals and fans love him. This a personal story with a vengeance. We've heard about Grizzard's faulty ticker before, of course, but not since Prof. Irving S. Cobb perfected the genre several generations ago have there been such sustained carryings-on about tubes and catheters, blood and guts. Advancing the art, Grizzard fearlessly discusses his testicles (his privates peek out from those hospital gowns), his dreams, his golf-club memberships, and his hemorrhoids. He mentions ``limbaughsectomies (putting good sense into the head of a liberal)''; provides a joke about spinsters; and offers a song about absent friends. For his devoted fans, it's pure Gizzard—inside and out, heart and soul—slick and sometimes funny. It's easy reading, as usual, and it flows like healthy body fluids. Reminiscent of Cobb's account of a drawing of a party ``whose stomach was sliced four ways, like a twenty-cent pie, and then folded back neatly, thus exposing his entire interior arrangement to the gaze of the casual observer.'' No illustrations, praise the Lord. (First printing of 150,000)