THE OSCAR

Flash! Hollywood unmasked for the umpteenth time! It's all about the Oscar chase. A blow-by-blow account of Frankie Fane's campaign to decorate his santle with moviedom's highest award, and every blow is south of the belt. (There is one decent man in the book, but he's from San Francisco, so he hardly counts.) By manipulating bad publicity, Fane attempts to garner the Academy vote. The other nominees provide him with plenty of material: a flagrant homosexual, a drunkard, a hypocrite and a John Birch type. Days awash with liquor and night noxious with sexuality, Fane hugs all to him, the better to knife their backs. The most satisfying thing about the poorly written book is the fact that he doesn't get his Oscar. The major annoyance (aside from total tastelessness) is the intrusion of footnotes etailing past Academy Awards. At the very least you can play ""guess-who"" with the ast in this roman a clef of the overexposed celluloid capital.