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Two of the best books this season are posthumous— heavy sigh. Late, great comic icon STANLEY ELKIN leaves us with Mrs. Ted Bliss (Hyperion), a dark and subtle satire on the neuroses of a Jewish widow. And in WILLIAM GOLDING'S final novel, The Double Tongue (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the prophetess at Delphi reflects on her long reign.

Also this month: PHILIP ROTH'S wicked wit is as sharp as Satan's pitchfork in Sabbath's Theater (Houghton Mifflin).

DINESH D'SOUZA posits that racism is a purely Western phenomenon in The End of Racism (Free Press). Seventy-four remarkable senior citizens sound off on our century in STUDS TERKEL'S Coming of Age (New Press). Manhattan, When I Was Young (Houghton Mifflin) is MARY CANTWELL'S luminous memoir of life in the Big Apple in the 1950s and 60s. HANIF

KUREISHI'S highly original second novel, The Black Album (Scribner), is set at a London community college. ALFRED KAZIN'S Writing Was Everything (Harvard) is an intellectual smorgasbord. Neocon ANDREW SULLIVAN argues for gay equality in Virtually Normal (Knopf). A widower's haunting memories of his beautiful wife permeate JOSEPHINE HART'S Oblivion (Viking). Religion, violence, and adolescent gay love collide in JIM GRIMSLEY'S powerful novel Dream Boy (Algonquin). Masterworks and some never-beforeseen Spanish treasures are exhibited in Paintings of the Prado (Bulfinch). CAROLYN G. HEILBRUN tells the tale of Gloria Steinem in The Education of a Woman (Dial), from her dreary childhood to feminist role model. KURT ANDERSEN, JAMIE MALANOWSKI, and LISA BIRNBACH eavesdrop on the embarrassing rants of famous folks in their book, Loose Lips (Fireside), based on their recent play. And, another heavy sigh, JULIA PHILLIPS'S Driving Under the Affluence (HarperCollins) is ax-grinding at its ugly best by the L.A. executioner no one wants to lunch with.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL