Vanities

Hot Type

—ELISSA SCHAPPELL

Befuddled by ganja and the appearance of his wild-man editor, Grady Tripp, a struggling novelist and professor at a small-town college, proceeds to further estrange his wife, murder his lover's dog, and wrestle with his magnum opus, Wonder Boys, not coincidentally the title of wonder boy MICHAEL CHABON'S hilarious second novel, out this month from Villard. An absolute natural for the silver screen. Speaking of Tinseltown, director SIDNEY LUMET chats about the nuts and bolts of cinema in Making Movies (Knopf). The late British director MICHAEL POWELL shoots from the hip about the likes of Welles and Kurosawa in Million Dollar Movie (Random House). Fifty years of photos from the Magnum archives explore a galaxy of Hollywood stars in Magnum Cinema (Phaidon). SUSAN BERNARD'S series “Bernard of Hollywood's Pin-ups”— Blondes!, Brunettes! and Redheads! (Warner)—showcases her photog father's cheesecake art. And TIM STREET-PORTER'S picture book The Los Angeles House (Crown) provides a realtor's view over the high security fences.

Also this month: LUCY KAVALER'S historical bodice ripper Heroes & Lovers (Dutton) straddles the turn-of-the-century suffrage movement and the golden age of polar exploration. STANLEY POTTINGER delivers a chilling medical thriller, The Fourth Procedure (Ballantine). In MARK HELPRIN'SMemoir from Antproof Case (Harcourt Brace), an aging expat living in Brazil pens his memoirs. An American photojournal ist finds love in PICO IYER'SCuba and the Night (Knopf). Siblings cling to each other as their nuclear family implodes in KIRSTY GUNN'S seductively beautiful first novel, Rain (Atlantic Monthly). In Harry & Teddy (Random House), THOMAS GRIFFITH charts the bond between Time founder Henry Luce and reporter Theodore H. White. ALLEN GINSBERG'sJournals Mid-Fifties (HarperCollins) traverses the formative years of the granddaddy-o of Beat poetry. EDWARD TIVNAN argues muddled issues such as abortion and euthanasia in The Moral Imagination (Simon & Schuster). In The Invention of Heterosexuality (Dutton), historian JONATHAN NED KATZ challenges the status quo. And, finally, showers of praise for ROBERT J. HUTCHINSON'SThe Book of Vices (Riverhead Books), a wicked sally through a collection of classic immoral tales. Long live sloth!