POP GOES AMERICA

There's a little bit of pop culture in every reader, so this is a book with something for everybody who reads. Zinsser, who for 20 years has jockeyed a syndicated column, sights in on everything from Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans to James Bond's Aston Martin. His two longest essays are a review of pop artists and of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Often, he is sympathetic to the subjects he derides. His -O-M Club chapter is a counteragent to easy cynicism from intellectuals about the club's choices. He delightedly posits In Cold Blood as the perfect expression of current American taste in reading: novelized non-fiction. In B-O-M sales, it's nonfiction, at something like 9-1. He tells about visiting the set of Thunderball, interviews Woody Allen, and reveals why Catch-22 for him most closely catches the spirit of WWII. He reviews the so-called black humorists, the death of the Burma Shave jingle, the God Is Dead theologians, and the Diners Club, and plants his nose smack into the men's toiletries market. Zinsser seldom cuts very deeply, but he is definitely amusing and not given to stock jokes. Should appeal.