Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 12, 1995                   TAG: 9506130013
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LEAVE LOVE SCENES TO MERYL & CLINT

These books are not the kind you keep around. You don't want your Aunt Zelda to see them when she brings you a nice peach cobbler and gives the kids a copy of "Black Beauty" that has been in the family for years.

All you have to do to get published in this country these days is to get arrested for murder, become a politician, be a former houseguest of O.J. Simpson, or get barred from the Simpson trial because the judge has tapes showing that you chewed gum during the proceedings.

This gum chewing is a serious threat to the national system of justice and deserves to be punished severely.

Wait for a book titled: "I Chewed Gum During O.J. Simpson's Trial and Paid the Price."

Before going any further here, let me admit that I've been surly about the current state of American literature since the book club tricked me into reading "The Bridges of Madison County" by offering it as a freebie. Here is a book that belongs in the landfill, worries about the environment to the contrary.

I became morose when I found out that Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood would star in the movie.

I confess here, also, that I never read a word Newt Gingrich ever wrote, which does give me some comfort.

But I was surprised to find out that Republican Sen. Bob Dole is not so crazy about a love scene in a Gingrich novel. The senator, as we know, is running for president so fast that he blurs up on television sometimes.

Think about that. Did you ever think you'd see the day in this country when a Republican congressman - whose roots are in a party that has always stood for sensible shoes and plain cloth coats - would write a love scene?

A love scene in which, for all we know, a woman who looks like Meryl has gossamer thighs that gleam in the moonlight and gives herself in unbridled passion to a man called Clint?

And they smoke later and discuss proposed cuts in Medicare?

I'm with the senator. This kind of thing troubles me, too. Let's leave bodice-busting writing up to people who know that they're doing.

I just hope the senator, who out-Quayles Dan on family values, doesn't decide to write a book.

What this country doesn't need right now is another "Little Women."