Coming Back With the Sequel: Did Rhett...

Coming Back With the Sequel: Did Rhett Butler really mean it when he said he didn’t give a damn? Did Scarlett O’Hara get him back? Half a century after the drama began, the saga continues with “Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind,” written by Alexandra Ripley. In it, Scarlett returns to Rhett, there is a passionate love scene, a dramatic shipwreck, Rhett marries another woman and a pregnant Scarlett vows to get even. Excerpts are in the September Life magazine.

Pushkin’s Ghost: A Dutch literary journal has published for the first time an erotic poem by the 19th-Century Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin. “Barkov’s Ghost” is the tale of a Russian priest who gets a case of impotence in a brothel and later in a convent. He is cured by the ghost of Ivan Barkov, a 16th-Century Russian writer of erotic verse. Pushkin, born in Moscow of African descent, is called the founder of modern Russian language and poetry. His other poems are taught to schoolchildren throughout the Soviet Union.

Rumors Persist: Did John F. Kennedy have love affairs while President? The latest talk comes from retiring Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee in the August Vanity Fair. Bradlee said he believed moll Judith Exner’s claim that she had affairs with the President and mobster Sam Giancana at the same time. “He’d have been impeached today, for that. Oh, I would have led the charge against him. Yes sir!”

Funny Bone: Judging by the sales, author P. J. O’Rourke’s “Parliament of Whores” has hit a soft spot in the American psyche. The chapter “Would You Kill Your Mother to Pave I-95?” has O’Rourke rewriting the federal budget, cutting a grand total of $337.8 billion with a maneuver he calls “budget liposuction.” The writer thinks White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, whose frequent travels at government or lobbyists’ expense have raised hackles, should lose some weight: “If you’re going to act like a pig,” O’Rourke advises, “try not to be huge and fat.”