BOOKS: A frank exposure

So as not to bore his audience, a journalist must have an extensive and complex vocabulary. To get you in the mood for this book, I offer you one word: Bildungsroman. That's a novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological and intellectual development of a youthful main character. A college student can identify with that. But it is hard to look at one's own development objectively, to know when one makes the right or wrong decisions. Jeffrey Frank's novel offers the typical warning either to people who, like his character Brandon Sladder, are overly ambitious, or to their loved ones. The message is clear: it's lonely at the top. Frank's bonus moral is this: lonely at the top or not, the climb is darn good. During the course of The Columnist, Sladder makes himself into a far-reaching journalist. While he never reaches quite far enough to win a Pulitzer, he at least rubs shoulders (if not unmentionables) with various higher-ups, including the elder George Bush and John F. Kennedy. As Frank repeats again and again, ambitious men have ambitious appetites. (There is but one mention of Bill Clinton.) Though Brandon Sladder is self-absorbed, vain and harmful to others, the reader will find it hard to hate him. Although his wide-eyed view of politics and his self awe is endearing, his idealism ceases to be cute once he hits 40. Acute ascent must be followed by a painful descent, and Brandon's fall is as ugly as they come. Which brings me to Shakespeare: "Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." Or is it columny?