TELEVISION: Toynbee Doob's Pal

TELEVISION Toynbee Doob's Pal

The book has 96 pages and 47 chapters, but more than half the space is blank. Chapter 47 is titled "Lord Chesterfield's Last Letter to His Son," and consists entirely of this message: "Dear Junior—Get lost—Dad." But as book stores closed last week, 42,500 copies had been sold, and Jack Douglas' My Brother Was an Only Child (Dutton; $2.50) made the bestseller lists for the ninth straight week.

Author Douglas—who originally had the book privately printed and sent to some 400 friends—is a weathered Janizary in the gag profession, whose...