FLYWHEEL, SHYSTER AND FLYWHEEL The Marx Brothers’...

FLYWHEEL, SHYSTER AND FLYWHEEL The Marx Brothers’ Lost Radio Show edited by Michael Barson (Pantheon Books: $9.95) To compete with Texaco’s Fire Chief program, starring Ed Wynn, Esso in 1932 sponsored a radio program called “Five Star Theatre,” a different series every day of the week. On Mondays during “Five Star’s” inaugural radio season, the airwaves were delivered, at exactly 7:30 p.m., to the Marx Brothers (or, Groucho and Chico, as Harpo didn’t speak). The programs were never taped and the old scripts have only recently been rediscovered in archives.

The result is an extraordinary find for Marx Brothers fans. “Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel” is the ongoing saga of a law firm, presided over by Shyster Groucho and Chico, his assistant Ravelli.

GROUCHO: “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you $6 a week and you can bring your own lunches. . . . I’ll go even further than that. I’ll give you $6 a week and you can bring lunch for me too. . . . You can bring me a tomato sandwich on white bread.”

CHICO: “I no gotta white bread, but I can give you rye.”

GROUCHO: “All right. I’ll take a quart of rye.”

CHICO: “I’m sorry, but I’m wearing them.”

GROUCHO: “You’re wearing a quart of rye?”

CHICO: “Yes, my quartorye pants.”

EMPEROR OF CHINA

Self-Portrait of K’ang-hsi

by Jonathan D. Spence (Vintage Books: $8.95) Descended from a line of emperors (the Ch’ing Dynasty) who had ruled China for 1,800 years, K’ang-hsi was emperor from 1661 to 1722.

In this extraordinary work of scholarship, Jonathan Spence has achieved a magnificent intellectual reconstruction. Drawing from historical records as well as several hundred letters and notes, Spence has shaped an autobiographical memoir in K’ang-hsi’s own words.

K’ang-hsi’s thoughts range over such subjects as the responsibilities of a ruler, military preparedness and succession after his death (he had 56 children, borne by 30 consorts of varying ranks). On the subject of his sons, K’ang-hsi becomes reflective, deeply disappointed with his chosen heir (“(Yin-jeng) remained unchanging in evil, my heart was ash, hope gone”).

Spence’s felicitous translation brings the emperor vividly to life, and his introduction provides, in brief, a fascinating historical scenario of 17th-Century China.

THE GOOD TIMES ARE KILLING ME

A Novel

by Lynda Barry (The Real Comet Press, Seattle, Wash.: $16.95, illustrated) In cartoonist Lynda Barry’s first work of fiction, 12-year-old Edna Arkins describes life as she’s known it--the changes in her family, her neighborhood in transition--as seen from the street where she has always lived. The street, which had housed mostly white families, now yields “Chinese, Negro, White, Japanese, Filipino” families, Edna writes.

In sections, each no longer than a few paragraphs, Edna talks about the record player that changed her life (inherited from her father’s co-worker who was in fact the “girlfriend we didn’t know about yet”), a dance called the Pimp Walk (“we didn’t know a lot about pimps except they wore great clothes . . . had nice cars and walked cool”).

Though essentially very funny, the heart of the book lies in Edna’s friendship with Bonna Willis, the toughest black girl in her neighborhood--and how childhood loyalties are challenged by racism.

THE GREAT TRIUMVIRATE

Webster, Clay and Calhoun

by Merrill D. Peterson (Oxford University Press: $12.95) “Webster, Clay and Calhoun (were) the legitimate successors of Washington, Adams and Jefferson . . . (a) second race of giants,” writes Merrill Peterson in his introduction to this major work of American history.

Beginning as the Congress of 1812-1813 is convening and ending on the brink of the Civil War, “The Great Triumvirate” tells the story of the rise to power by Daniel Webster of New Hampshire, Henry Clay of Kentucky, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

Though none attained his highest goal--the presidency--each powerfully shaped the nation’s course in ways that would be unimaginable today. “Merrill Peterson has given us a thorough and scholarly account of these three greats and the grand debates that consumed their lives,” Jody Powell wrote in his review. “If his excellent work has a major fault, it is in understating the role of their common nemesis Andrew Jackson.”

THE NEWSPAPER OF CLAREMONT STREET

by Elizabeth Jolley (King Penguin: $6.95) This work is not a tribute to neighborhood journalism: Newspaper and sometimes Weekly are nicknames for Margarite Morris, the novel’s protagonist, who makes her living cleaning houses and has the reputation as the most reliable, up-to-date source for local news and events. “The Newspaper of Claremont Street knew everything and talked all the time in the places where she worked,” Jolley writes. “She even knew how often the people changed their sheets and underwear.”

Throughout her busy, though bleak, life she maintains a single hope--to save enough money to buy herself a home in the country, which, by hook or by crook, she gets in the end.

Though macabre at times, “every word of this spare little novel is right,” Judith Freeman wrote in these pages. “To live is to struggle. It’s all a very funny and very sad business, but hope flutters throughout”.