LET IN THE SUN by Woody Klein. 297 pages. Macmillan. $5.95.
The house at 311 East 100th Street in Harlem enjoys a reputation for being the grubbiest slum building on the grubbiest slum street in the U.S. It has been the scene of countless fires, fights, arrests, knifings, suicides, and a few deaths that defy all explanation. Woody Klein, reporter for the New York World-Telegram and Sun, relates the depressing history of this house, all the more depressing because politicians, social workers, and no end of other do-gooders have been promising to clean it up for decades, and yet nothing has actually...