THREEPENNY NOVEL (396 pp.)Berfolt BrechfGrove Press ($3.75; Paperbound, $1.75).
This is a corrosively funny novel about business chicanery. Its unlikely author: a Communist with an irrepressible sense of humor. In Threepenny Novel, the late German Playwright and Novelist Bertolt Brecht takes the position that business is crime conducted in an aura of respectability. His book is somehow engaging despite this classic Marxist idea, because of its raffishly vital characters who make all the Cash McCalls in their grey flannel suits seem as sedate, proper and wooden as the paneling of their executive suites....