Private Parts.

• Author: Shuger, Scott

Private Parts Howard Stern Simon & Schuster, $23 By Scott Shuger People in book publishing are always complaining about how much material they have to wade through and how little of it is any good. Well, with the publication of this book, a 446-page attack of verbarrhea from morning radio man Howard Stern, it's going to get much worse. For anybody harboring any remaining doubts, Private Parts proves that in America today, anything can be a "book," and anyone can be an "author." Indeed, it proves that anyone can be the nation's No.1 best-selling "author." Yet another triumph of democracy over quality.

To be fair, Stern is sometimes funny. Referring to a right-wing group asking for donations for its effort to have him removed from the airwaves, Stern wonders, "Why are they raising money to force me off the air? Send the money directly to me, and if it's enough, I'll leave voluntarily." In an on-air discussion with Dick Cavett, Stern combined a reference to Cavett's up-and-now-mostly-down talk show career with one to Cavett's long battle against depression this way: "What's worse, Dick, when they cancel one of your shows or when they cancel one of your prescriptions?"

And, very occasionally, Stern is even funny when the topic might actually matter to someone. When Magic Johnson's announcement that he was HIV-positive was greeted with gushing reverence from the media, Stern had his own, more on-point take. Stern observed that

Magic had kept hundreds of women he'd slept with in the dark about the fatal risk they were taking. The book includes Stern's on-air, imaginary rendition of Magic's less-than-frank discussion with a former bed partner:

Magic: "You know what, baby, it would be a whole lot easier if you tuned in to national TV. Just tune in to my press conference."

Woman: "Okay, but that doesn't sound like good news."

Magic: "Look at it this way: You can smoke all the cigarettes you want, do lots of drugs, jump out of an airplane, and race cars."

"What I told my listeners," Stem writes, "was that Magic was pretty damn irresponsible to get it in the first place. It wasn't as if he got infected through a bad blood transfusion or from his dentist. No, this guy came down with it because he had incredible amounts of unprotected sex... Some role model! ... Meanwhile a real hero like Jonas Salk can't afford cable TV."

However, Stern's book contains remarkably few such moments. Far more typical is what he says about men who are against abortion: "I...