Wry Crisp

PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES (192 pp.)--Jean Kerr--Doubleday ($3.50).

Jean Kerr is a kind of wrong-way Anne Morrow Lindbergh flying not to but from contemplative solitude. Like Gift from the Sea, Please Don't Eat the Daisies offers a busy suburban wife's observations on life, but where Author Lindbergh listened for wisdom in the humming of a sea shell, Author Kerr listens for gags in the clatter of a typewriter. She has brought high spirits to her varied roles of playwright (King of Hearts), free-lance writer, TV guest, wife (of New York Herald Tribune Drama Critic Walter Kerr). Laboring in the literary hell's kitchen of humor, Author Kerr, 33, knows that one cannot make a comic omelet without laying a few eggs. She lays a few in Daisies, but mostly she cooks with laughing gas. On the menu:

CHILDREN : "We are being very careful with our children [four boys, aged 4 to 12]. They'll never have to pay a psychiatrist twenty-five dollars an hour to find out why we rejected them. We'll tell them why we rejected them. Because they're impossible, that's why."

WRITERS GONE RUSTIC: "Five o'clock finds him up to his elbows in cows. 'The Boy and I finished the milking, and there, in sight of the cows, we sat down with a pail of the rich, warm brew and refreshed ourselves' . . . Then he adds, 'My, how The Boy is shooting up. He is already an inch taller than The Girl.' I don't know what gets into writers when they move to the country. They can't remember the names of their children."

HOUSE-HUNTING: "In the beginning we made the usual mistake of looking at houses we could afford. I am working on

Kerr's Law, which states in essence: all the houses you can afford to buy are depressing."

THE LOT OF A CRITIC'S WIFE: "The producer feels that the mere physical presence of a wife depresses the critic, lowers his spirits, clogs his areas of good will, and leaves his head rattling with phrases like 'witless,' 'tasteless,' and 'below the level of the professional theatre' . . . 'What if a doctor had to bring his wife along when he performed an operation?' the producer will ask you. 'Can't you see her sitting there murmuring, 'Here's a nice suture, dear, and why don't you try this clamp?' "

Author Kerr goes on to spoof interior decorating, domestic pets, diets and operations. It's a pity that she does less of what she does best, literary parodies. She confines herself to a hilarious take-off on the morose moppet, Franchise Sagan (TIME, Dec. 10, 1956) and an equally funny spoof of Mickey Spillane called "Don Brown's Body." Sample: "I was going into Longchamps when this tomato waltzes by. She was a tomato surprise. A round white face with yellow hair poured over it like chicken gravy on mashed potatoes. Her raccoon coat was tight in all the right places."

The right place for a laugh, as Author Kerr sees it, is anywhere, even the index. She has concocted a mock-erudite one with such items as: "Fifth, Beethoven's" and "Idiot, tale told by a." The proper cross references for Please Don't Eat the Daisies might be "Rye Krisp, thinner than," but, at the same time, "Monkeys, more fun than a barrel of."

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