DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711040049

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review 

SOURCE: BY M.L. LAKE 

                                            LENGTH:   55 lines

COMEDIAN/ACTRESS WRITES WITH STARTLING FRANKNESS

A COUPLE OF pages into the second chapter of Whoopi Goldberg's new book ``Book'' - the chapter detailing the comic actress' farting and bowel habits - a reader is likely to wonder, as I did: ``Do I really want to know all this?''

Goldberg lays claim to being ``the fart queen, the ruler of all I pollute.''

But if you think that's tasteless, you haven't read nothin' yet. Keep reading. That pronouncement is tame compared to the ``truths'' that Whoopi shares with readers.

Alternatingly outrageous, provocative, and brutally honest, ``Book'' offers up a host of Whoopi-isms. Most of them laced with - heck, buried under - profanity and blunt talk about body parts and bodily functions.

Whoopi holds nothing back. You learn, for instance, that she loves oral sex, but hates eggs. She gets annoyed if she's called an African American because she thinks it belittles her contributions. She doesn't care how many people the president has slept with as long as he's a good leader.

And so on, and so on.

Mixed in with all of this opining is the story of Whoopi's life. Her often touching recollections of her childhood with her mother and her brother Clyde, and her early years struggling as a single mother to raise a daughter on welfare, provide insight into her character. We learn that, underneath her seemingly I-could-give-a----- exterior is a sensitive individual who is often pained by man's inhumanity to man and what she sees as a straight-jacket mentality when it comes to human acceptance of diversity.

Whoopi talks candidly about how she has been hurt by fellow African Americans who have sometimes criticized her for dating - and marrying - white men. She responds by noting that her first husband was black, then stands her ground by saying that white guys were the ones inviting her out.

She hits on black-on-black racism: ``We dark-skinned blacks are pissed at the light-skinned blacks because they can pass as white, because they're not black enough, and the light-skinned blacks are pissed at the dark-skinned blacks because we somehow make them feel inferior, you know.''

Goldberg emerges as a far more complex person than you might imagine. She's willing to hang her heart and soul out on the line. The dirt, notwithstanding.

You might be turned off by her foul mouth. But I guarantee you'll find yourself laughing or nodding in agreement at many of her observations - on things great and small. MEMO: M.L. Lake is recruitment director for The Virginian-Pilot. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

BOOK REVIEW

``Book''

Author: Whoopi Goldberg

Publisher: Weisbach/Morrow. 240 pp.

Price: $22

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