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"He who underestimates the American public will never go broke!" cried "Professor" Irwin Corey, paraphrasing H.L. Mencken to a dazed National Book Awards' audience in Manhattan. Standing in for Thomas Pynchon, whose Gravity's Rainbow shared the 1973 fiction prize with Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, Comedian Corey confused the assembled authors, critics and publishers with a frenetic routine, prompting some to think that he was really the reclusive Pynchon himself. Others believed that his performance was a clever parody of Pynchon's tortuous style. The ceremonies were not all fun and games. Poetry co-winners were Allen Ginsberg and Adrienne Rich. Ginsberg's standin, Poet Peter Orlovsky, clad in a T shirt covered with grim statistics from the Viet Nam War, quoted Ginsberg: "There is no longer any hope for the salvation of America." Rich somberly accepted her award on behalf of "all the women whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world." Obviously eager to put the proceedings into proper perspective, a salesman for the University of California Press streaked in front of the stage, shouting, "Read books, read books!" · The Watergate sleuths of the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein, 30, and Bob Woodward, 30, received a $55,000 advance from Simon & Schuster in early 1973 for their account of the scandal. After the sale of movie rights to Robert Redford for $450,000 and Playboy's $25,000 check for two excerpts, the pair expected to gross around $500,000 each from the finished book, All the President's Men, to be published this June. Then came a pleasant surprise: Warner Paperback library offered $1 million for the paperback rights—a record for a book yet to be published in hardcover. As for the sleuths' boss, Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, he had a wry proposal for how to use their new wealth. "If you two have any decency at all," he said, "you'll help Nixon out with his taxes."