One Hand Jerking

From cultural critic and founder/editor of The Realist, a collection of iconoclastic columns written for several alternative periodicals, as well as The Nation, the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream outlets. Krassner (Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut, 1993) has grouped these pieces under a dozen or so headings, including Zen Bastard, Got Porn? Under the Counterculture, Body Parts and Brain Damage Control, and has given them such attention-grabbing titles as The Onanist Quartet, The Great Foreskin Conspiracy, Pregnancy and Pot and Jews in the News. For Krassner followers, much of this will be a trip down memory lane: recollections of Lyle Stuart and Walter Winchell in the 1950s, Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory in the 1960s, Larry Flynt in the 1970s. But Krassner, now in his 70s, also has a sharp eye on the current scene. He provides a hilarious mock interview with Bernie Kerik's nanny ( for Christmas, his friend Rudy gave me a Green Card ); a piece on tourism and the mishandling of the tsunami warnings in Thailand; and commentary on Prince Harry in his Nazi uniform. Of course, President Bush, Condoleeza Rice and the war in Iraq get his attention, as do Janet Jackson, Madonna, Bill O'Reilly and Hunter S. Thompson. While conservative readers may find Krassner scurrilous, sacrilegious, even obscene, others will see his writing as ribald, pointed satire. The problem is not with the content but with the packaging. The pieces don't work well in a single volume, and reading them in sequence is a mind-numbing mistake. Pick this one up only while waiting for the water to boil or the train to arrive. They are best when dipped into at random and read piecemeal. (Kirkus Reviews)