Books: Among the Abs & Pects

MUSCLE BEACH (236 pp.)—Ira Wallach—Little, Brown ($3.50).

A boggle is, among other things, the gurgle made by quicksand as it closes over its victim. Such febrile considerations flash through the boggled minds of readers as they sink out of sight in Author Wallach's pun-swampy prose. The man is popping with word-foolery. He interrupts his narrative—and a more interruptible narrative would be hard to find—to inform the reader that a tirade is "a sneak attack on a haberdashery," and a syndrome is "a large amphitheater where the ancient Romans used to sin." He dreams moodily...