MIKHAIL S. GORBACHEV An Intimate Biography by...

MIKHAIL S. GORBACHEV An Intimate Biography by the editors of Time Magazine (Time/Signet: $4.50)

Time’s writing style, showcasing the New Journalism’s ability to order the clutter of contemporary affairs into colorful portraits and telling, novelistic detail, is ideally suited for an effort like this. Mikhail Gorbachev emerges as a largely likable figure in these pages, neither an opportunist (he risked forwarding unpopular ideas during the frenzied paranoia of the Stalin years), nor a naif (he would have spouted anti-Semitic rhetoric if he had been forced to, according to friends interviewed by the editors). He knows when to be bold (censuring his university instructor for uncritically reading a new work by Stalin) and when to appear moderate (firing Moscow Party Chief Boris Yeltsin when Yeltsin made a speech that threatened Kremlin leaders).

Yet even the talent of these Time editors isn’t enough to make up for the lack of information available about Gorbachev the man. Gorbachev has deliberately shied away from offering personal revelations in public, Strobe Talbott tells us in a stylish, smart introduction, because he wants to avoid creating a “cult of personality” like the kind that hurt Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. The editors get around this problem in chapters on Gorbachev’s years as a university student in Moscow and as a provincial official in Stavropol, interviewing friends of Gorbachev who offer fascinating glimpses of his youth. The chapter on “Growing Up,” however, studies Soviet social and political affairs at the time of Gorbachev’s youth rather than looking at Gorbachev as a youth. Later chapters on Gorbachev’s years as an official in Moscow do a good job of capturing his policy stands but reveal little about his feelings, life-style or philosophical convictions. The chapter, “One Day in the Life of Mikhail Sergeyevich,” earnestly tries to be “intimate”--speculating that “Gorbachev probably sends his shirts and underwear to a special laundry near Moscow’s Ukraine Hotel that caters to senior officials”--but ends up reviewing news stories about some of the public ceremonies Gorbachev has presided over since taking office.

TOO FUNNY TO BE PRESIDENT by Morris K. Udall with Bob Neuman and Randy Udall (Henry Holt: $16.95) The title comes from James J. Kilpatrick, who wrote an obituary of Morris Udall’s 1976 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination which concluded, “Mo’s too funny to be President.” Udall, the U.S. congressman from Arizona who last year was voted “the most effective member of Congress,” effectively rebuts Kirkpatrick in these pages by showing the indispensability of humor in a job where one is likely to be called a rat, vermin and parasite by several letter-writers a day. A sense of humor, Udall contends, can allow a politician to take the punches while still remaining receptive and responsible to the people.

While the (consistently funny) jokes that Udall prefers often seem nasty, this book is one of precious few to forward an optimistic vision of American politics. Politicians are responsive to gentle jabs, Udall insists, countering the cynical but widespread notion that legislators never read letters: “Rest assured,” he writes, “you’ll receive a response from me--unless you’ve suggested I do something anatomically impossible.” Udall prefers humor which doesn’t whitewash problems, from jokes that are mocking to those that are humbling. “Congress is so strange,” says one foreign observer quoted in these pages, “A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens--and then everybody disagrees.”

WHO AM I THIS TIME? Uncovering the Fictive Personality by Jay Martin (Norton: $18.95)

While the 1970s celebrated narcissism, the 1980s began with two warnings about what can happen when people gaze too intently at their reflection in the mirror: In 1980, Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon after substituting Holden Caufield’s “fictive personality” for his own; in 1981, John Hinckley shot President Reagan after “becoming” Travis Bickle of “Taxi Driver.” Understandably, we have come to view fictive personalities as dangerous aberrations. “Who Am I This Time?” offers a fascinating rebuttal to this point of view, however, persuasively arguing that fictive personalities are both widespread (“the psychology of our time”) and potentially beneficial (Jay Martin contrasts “good fictions”--imagination, play--with “bad” ones--self-deception, illusions). Gen. George Patton, Martin believes, exemplifies the constructive potential of fictions. Patton overcame his childhood dyslexia, allergies and panic attacks by “playing” the parts of his heroes, practicing before a mirror for hours to achieve suitably fierce facial expressions. Also constructive, as Martin sees it, was Jean-Paul Sartre’s creation of characters in adventure tales, which helped him deal with isolation and define his identity.

Unfortunately, Martin’s distinctions between good and bad fictions are unclear. He implies that Sartre’s use of fictions is ideal because it is active and creative, for instance: “Instead of simply swallowing others’ stories (Sartre) created his own, and through them he made his way to reality.” But if this is so, what makes Patton--who submerged his own feelings of inadequacy by borrowing identities from Hannibal, Caesar and Napoleon--different from Hinckley? Martin begins to resolve these issues in a brief look at the Wintu Indians of Northern California, who build their identity entirely on what Martin would call fictions. They do not recognize the self as a separate entity. Instead of saying “John and I,” they say “John we.” But rather than exploring the next logical questions--Are the identities of individuals in the West also made up of group fictions?, Is our I an extension of society’s We ? (Sartre would say “yes”)--Martin dismisses the matter and moves on to another subject: TV. He blames TV for encouraging the proliferation of fictions, implying that they are the product of a time and place, not, as the evidence he presents would suggest, an enduring dimension of the human character.

HISPANIC U.S.A. Breaking the Melting Pot by Thomas Weyr (Harper & Row: $22.95) Aware that the Hispanics he met while writing this book “clearly wanted one of their own to do it,” Thomas Weyr has tried to broaden his perspective as an Anglo book author living in New York City by interviewing a host of Hispanic journalists, politicians, bankers and academics, among others. Conveyed to us in the third person, these Hispanic voices lack resonance, spunk and immediacy. But while Weyr doesn’t capture Hispanic passions and convictions, he does offer a balanced, responsible overview of the issues facing Hispanics in the United States. Weyr begins by describing a pace of Hispanic population growth that will surprise many Americans. America is the fourth or fifth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world (Los Angeles is the largest Hispanic city), while by the year 2000, according to many projections, as many Americans will be speaking Spanish as will be speaking English.

Weyr’s claim that this population increase is paralleled by growth in political representation and economic integration is sure to raise criticism from some Hispanic leaders. “Hispanics started later than blacks and have further to go, but they are on the track and running,” he writes, pointing to successes in business and politics. “Hispanic U.S.A.” also might be criticized for its failure to profile different Hispanic groups in separate sections and to study images of Hispanics in American pop culture. A clear majority of Weyr’s arguments are well-reasoned, however. Here’s Weyr, for instance, on the English-only proposition that passed in California in 1986: “It seems a pointless exercise. English may be the glue that holds this continental and culturally diverse nation together, but it cannot be legislated into exclusive use any more than Spanish can be legislated out of existence.” And while Lester Langley concludes that “Hispanics want the Hispanization of America” in his new book, “Mexamerica” (reviewed on Page 6), Weyr contends that “no plot exists to supplant the Anglo, no desire to build a Hispanic nation separate from the rest of the country.”