Bookends

In the epoch of Mommy and Daddy Dearest, this memoir is anomalous: a daughter extravagantly admires her father. Nancy Sinatra is aware of Frank's liabilities--the mercurial temper, the sullen withdrawals, the ring-a-ding-ding philosophy. But as she shows, much of the gossip is myth. The subject admits that if he had been quite the satyr of legend, "I'd be speaking to you today from a jar in the Harvard Medical School." Instead, he speaks through a remarkable series of interviews ("It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin . . . The first thing I needed was extraordinary breath control"), documents and anecdotes. Accompanying photographs range from the Big Band and bobby-sox eras to the film comeback in the mid-'50s, the "Only the Lonely" albums and a restive retirement. On the trajectory, four marriages and innumerable crises leave indelible marks on the face and style. At one taping he finally berates himself--"Drink, drink, drink. Smoke, smoke, smoke. Schmuck, schmuck, schmuck!"--and tries to change his ways. Through it all, the perfectionist raises pop singing to an art, and the philanthropist never quits. How has Ol' Blue Eyes endured and prevailed for five decades? A doctor, naming Sinatra an honorary staff member of a hospital for which he had raised the funds, has the bottom line. The title, he says, is superfluous: "Frank's been operating for years."

THE SOLACE OF OPEN SPACES by Gretel Ehrlich Viking; 131 pages; $14.95

The motto of Wyoming is "Equal Rights," which suits Gretel Ehrlich just fine. The handsome, clear-eyed Californian went to the state in 1976 as a documentary filmmaker, and recalls that "I had the experience of waking up not knowing where I was, whether I was a man or a woman, or which toothbrush was mine." The 100-mile vistas and scouring winds leveled differences. In these sketches of Western life, she tells of burying herself in work: sheep-herding, cattle ranching and collecting sensations. Cowboys strike her as "androgynous at the core." It has something to do with a life of mothering animals. Her recollection of being hit by lightning: "It felt as though sequins had been poured down my legs." Left to her own literary devices, Ehrlich sometimes lapses into fancy-pants prose. But when dealing with chores, weather and characters, her writing has a hard, clean edge, unblunted by the world she is trying to leave behind.

BENCHLEY AT THE THEATRE by Robert Benchley Ipswich; 220 pages; $14.95

The comic essayist never did produce the serious work he wanted to, and he wasted too much time in Hollywood, playing small parts in smaller movies. But seated on the aisle during the '20s and '30s, as drama critic of Life, the humor magazine, and later The New Yorker, Robert Benchley was in his essential elements of earth, air and firewater. The boozy, bemused uncle of the theater sees a parade of greats. He applauds Jimmy Durante, discovers Bob Hope and Groucho Marx, and collects parodies of a Cole Porter lyric: "Night and day under the bark of me/ There's an Oh, such a mob of microbes making a park of me." The critic does not always twinkle; even Eugene O'Neill is regarded without awe because "no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously." As this rare and delightful scrapbook proves, O'Neill's was one affliction Benchley would never suffer.

YOU CAN FOOL ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME by Art Buchwald Putnam; 332 pages; $16.95

Art Buchwald is the nation's most popular political humorist because he is not too funny. Readers of his syndicated columns never have to worry about the embarrassment of laughing out loud in packed trains or at crowded lunch counters. In addition, Buchwald's wit is a comfort, not a goad. He is like a town crier assuring the citizenry of the status quo: the sheep are still in the toxic meadow, the cows in the surplus corn, the politicians reliably hypocritical and venal.

This successful conspiracy between author and audience works best in the evanescent pages of a daily newspaper. Packed lead to kicker in book form, Buchwald's formula whimsy loses much of its punch. Verbal skits about Geraldine Ferraro, Michael Jackson, the President, home-computer miseries, the Pope and Cabbage Patch dolls now read like shots in the dark. Yet this and previous collections of the journalist's craft may one day enjoy new life. Buchwald's job is to repeat history as farce faster than one can say Karl Marx. To the patient reader, farce inevitably returns as nostalgia.