FLOATER
by Calvin Trillin
Ticknor & 204 pages; $9.95
Those who work for newsmagazines sometimes wish that life were really as the novelists depict itfull of eccentrics who collect iguanas and medicine writers who come down with the exotic diseases they have just described.
Take Calvin Trillin. Please. At the very least, take his book, a thoroughly diverting novel that nips at the unexposed flanks of the newsmagazine process, particularly the so-called back of the book, where a new sect or fad is no news until the magazine's editors/correspondents discover it. There is, for...