IZZY MANHEIM'S REUNION

Instead of a brain, this book's got a dimple. Izzy Manheim is a South African glue magnate--""a titan in the tacky world of adhesives""--who gets it info his head to stage a reunion in Toronto for his college class, '45. Arriving in Canada, though, Izzy finds that all his old pals, every single one, haven't the faintest memory of him. The reunion goes off as planned anyway, slopping over into a handball-style flashback involving Izzy's student days and postgrad days as an anthropology-novice in cahoots with an African witchdoctor--plus some razzmatazz about the shadowy involvement of some of the reunionists with a computer operation in the Arizona desert that's in touch with outer-space. Thus encumbered, Myers labors (oh, does he work: ""Never one to buck a trend, particularly when that trend might make a buck. . ."") to spook us a little about what's real and what's not, who is and who isn't. But what it boils down to is a 348-page Abbott-and-Costello routine. With a case of the interminable, insufferable cutes. And names. Like: ""Lefty Fildis."" Or ""Lou Shmendrik."" Or ""Pop Goesthe."" And ""Kakapupu."" Our sentiments exactly.