HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

June, as pretty and unpredictable as a Georgia debutante loaded on gin. We're so proud of the Vanity Fair gang: Our esteemed culture critic, James Wolcott, steals the stage with his long-anticipated novel, The Catsitters (HarperCollins)—get out your bowls of milk. Mr. Kirn, please go to a white courtesy phone ... In Walter Kirn's novel-for-our-time, Up in the Air (Doubleday), a corporate-downsizer-cum-frequentflier-miles-chasing-desperado's quest for transcendence—a million miles—is thrust into a holding pattern. In Justice (Crown) the dashing Dominick Dunne, "Boswell of the bluebloods," serves his riveting courtroom writings on the criminal cases of the privileged from von Bulow to Skakel. Do you like to watch? Glamorous shutterbug Mario Testino'sAlive (Bulfinch) is a visual diary of his tres fashionable life. A jackal in evening dress and one of the pre-eminent essayists of our time, Gore Vidal bequeaths his ninth collection. The Last Empire (Doubleday), in which he lauds Charles Lindbergh and Dawn Powell and disparages such American icons as J.F.K. and the C.I.A. Also this month: René Pol Nevils and Deborah George Hardy'sIgnatius Rising (L.S.U.) uncorks the troubled tale of John Kennedy Toole, the unhinged eccentric whose bizarre comic masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces, was published posthumously and won the Pulitzer Prize. Seasonal images of Maine (Knopf) shot by the acclaimed selftaught landscape photographer Terrell S. Lester are enhanced by essays from such writers as Ann Beattie and Richard Ford. David Schickler waltzes in with Kissing in Manhattan (Dial). Francine du Plessix Gray recalls how feminist and philosopher Simone Weil (Lipper/Viking) was one of modern times' most passionate activists, nimble intellectuals, and compelling mystics. Richard Klein's bright-as-baubles novel Jewelry Talks (Pantheon) assumes the form of an obsessively retooled thesis-cum-memoir of a baffled aesthete pixilated by the allure of adornments. In Gerry Spence'sHalf Moon and Empty Stars (Scribner) a maelstrom erupts between twin brothers when one chooses to stay true to his Native American roots and the other goes the way of the white man and becomes a Wall Street banker. Dennis Hopper, A Keen Eye: Artist, Photographer, Filmmaker (NAI) stokes the actor-artist's intense legend. Country singer-songwriter Steve Earle steps up with a collection of short stories, Doghouse Roses (Houghton Mifflin). If you're the impatient sort who skips to the dirty parts of your racy beach book. Jack Murnighan and Nerve.com'sThe Naughty Bits (Three Rivers Press) is for you, culling as it does the steamiest and most scandalous sex scenes from the world's greatest books. Nora Sayre'sOn the Wing (Counterpoint) revisits her coming-of-age in the 1950s as a vivacious American bon vivant swanning round Europe. Paulette Bogan's barkingly funny Spike in the Kennel (Putnam) is like a jolly, dog-style Midnight Express for children. Gail Lumet Buckley tells a story long overdue in American Patriots (Random House), a salute to the courage, valor, and patriotism of America's black military, from the Buffalo Soldiers to Desert Storm. Give up a wolfish howl for Benjamin Darling'sVixens of Vinyl (Chronicle). Oo-la-la—the scanties-loving Beth Dunlop trots out a risque cavalcade of cheeky Victorian Beach Beauties (Stewart Tabori & Chang) preserved forever on hand-tinted postcards. Richard Lupoff pays tribute to the cover art of The Great American Paperback (Collectors Press), featuring cowboys, slumdwellers, and sloe-eyed dames. And, finally, editor George Plimpton scores with Home Run (Harcourt Brace), a bull pen of the best fiction and nonfiction ever written about home runs, with bat crackers by such boys of summer as Don DeLillo, Roger Angell, and John Updike. Summertime and the reading is easy, fish are jumping, and the critics are high ...