RALPH MAKES GOOD

She was umpulent, writhing with orgones and her dress was a sop to the letter of the law."" She was Sylvia Structure, a dime a dance queen who made Ralph do ""...things with his pelvic regions which were illegal only a few years ago."" Ralph is a self-made man, new in town and so happily stupid that he must have come there straight from an eggshell. On the advice of his barber, Ralph began as a lawn mower, shrewdly shifting to leaf raker with the seasonal decline of grass. One glimpse of Sylvia and a vision of bigger things enthralled him. He ran against the mayor, ""...a dependable criminal in the old tradition,"" and emerged as dogcatcher, a political position threatened by impeachment and lynching before Ralph makes good -- and Sylvia. It is the lightest of featherweight satire on local government, among other things, and this form has a banty-sized audience today. The famous comedian author entry may help counteract some of the reader apathy as well as the delight Cox takes in converting the precise use of words into literary wit.