King of the Heap

THE STEVENSON WIT by Bill Adler. 95 pages. Doub/eday. $3.95.

Although one or another of his five publishers is forever describing him as a well-known writer, Bill Adler disagrees. "I consider myself a professional thinker," he says briskly, "and there aren't very many of us."

Not many, at least, like Adler, who used to be an adman (Kenyon & Eckhardt) and magazine editor (McCall's) before he began to think professionally. Since 1961, when he went around to his friends and gathered up their kids' funny letters for a volume called Letters from Camp, Adler has become the acknowledged "king of nonbooks." His 25 volumes (eight published in 1965 alone) have sold more than 2,000,000 copies and have brought him about $250,000 in royalties and guarantees. The Kennedy Wit alone sold 110,000 copies in hard cover and nearly 1,000,000 in paperback. The Johnson Humor, unsurprisingly, hasn't done terribly well --just under 25,000 copies so far. But the "letters" volumes, particularly Love Letters to the Beatles and Love Letters to the Mets, are hot items. Adler has no intention of letting the fire cool. Two of his researchers are currently gathering up Dear Internal Revenue and Kids' Letters to the FBI.

The Stevenson Wit, which Adler thought up shortly before Adlai Stevenson died, reminds readers that Stevenson was a singularly lighthearted and amusing man. There is, for example, his rallying call during the 1952 presidential campaign: "Eggheads unite--you have nothing to lose but your yolks!" Not to mention his wry crack after the election: "When I was a boy, I was told that anyone could be President, and I believed it." Or the comment he made in 1960 when he was caught in a traffic jam at the Washington airport as Charles de Gaulle arrived: "It seems my fate is always to be getting in the way of national heroes." All memorable enough--and merchandisable enough. But even Stevenson didn't coin enough to fill a book.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.