RAISED BY PUPPETS Only to Be Killed by Research <i> by Andrei Codrescu (Addison-Wesley: $8.95)</i>

Romanian-born poet Andrei Codrescu offers his sardonic reflections on the follies and inconsistencies of contemporary culture in this anthology of commentaries from NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Codrescu has an eye for the off-beat image. In the title essay, he muses on the giant puppets used to teach tame sandhill cranes how to socialize with wild birds, and turns the experiment into a metaphor for the problems of human communication. In one of his more outrageous pieces, he suggests that Americans eliminate the federal deficit by fining themselves 5 cents “every time they use the F-word.” (“Eddie Murphy . . . who has never spoken a whole sentence without using the F-word five or six times, would contribute quite a good deal. From each according to his needs.”) These concise essays are both entertaining and thought-provoking, but it’s impossible for anyone who’s listened to “All Things Considered” to read them without hearing the author’s distinctive, nasal voice.