THE BEST OF BAD HEMINGWAY with...

THE BEST OF BAD HEMINGWAY with an introduction by Digby Diehl (Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $8.95, illustrated). Even before the owners of Harry’s Bar & American Grill instituted their tongue-in-cheek contest, Hemingway’s clipped, hairy-chested prose made him the most parodied writer in America. In his introduction, Digby Diehl describes the process of winnowing the “good bad Hemingway” from the “bad bad Hemingway” to produce a book that spoofs the writer’s most famous works. The entries, sprinkled with irreverent references to video games, freeway traffic, soap operas and clean, well-lighted places, are often quite clever. Gayle Briscoe’s “Al’s Welfare to Farms” begins “It was morning and had been morning since late last night,” while Walter John Hickey concludes “Chapter I”: “The feasts had been immovable, and although he wanted to have, he had not.” Readers who endured college seminars in the 20th- Century American Novel may also enjoy the companion volume, “The Best of Bad Faulkner” (Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $8.95, illustrated), although the satirical looks at life in Yoknapatawpha County are, not surprisingly, a lot tougher to get through.