Bookends: Oct. 28, 1985

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I NEVER PLAYED THE GAME

by Howard Cosell

Morrow; 380 pages; $18.95

The adenoids are missing, but the tone is unmistakable ("Those halcyon days of yore are gone for good"). Through the booming names and assertions comes the clarion bleat of Howard Cosell blowing his own horn. In this $ autobiographical screed, the Mouth That Roared shows that in a 32-year career, no triumph was ever forgotten or insult overlooked. In the early 1980s, his Monday Night Football colleagues made the mistake of being "full of themselves, obviously convinced they could handle the telecasts as well without me." The broadcaster turned viewer chortled as the audience dwindled: "I barely made it through the half-time highlights before falling asleep . . . Hey, I'm only human. I'll not lie about it. Some small part of me, on a highly personal level, was gratified to witness the eroding ratings."

Although he walked away from boxing because of its brutality and racketeering, he manfully assumes his share of responsibility: "My public persona helped revitalize boxing's once flagging popularity." After leaving the confessional, Cosell offers a scrapbook of his favorable reviews in newspapers and magazines to counter the "literary pogrom against me." The sad fact is that this wheedling self-inflation is unnecessary. Cosell was a tough-minded and honest salesman who could persuade sports fans to buy just about anything. As his book proves, he just stayed too long in the toy department.

CONTACT

by Carl Sagan

Simon & Schuster; 432 pages; $18.95

With terrestrials like Carl Sagan, who needs extras? Five years ago, he brought the cosmos into your living room and became an instant star in the electronic firmament. The astronomer at Cornell now takes aim at the fiction best-seller charts. Contact, his first novel, dramatizes a pet theme: the possibility of unearthly life in the universe. Despite dialogue like "Holy Toledo. That's hundreds of janskys," the book is an engaging pastiche of science and speculation.

The protagonist is Eleanor Arroway, director of Project Argus, a Government- sponsored undertaking to comb the universe for alien messages. The time is 1999, when, in Sagan's irrepressibly progressive vision, the President of the U.S. is a woman, and the world's smartest man is a Nigerian. The aliens, however, are stereotypical. By the time their cosmic call is returned, it is clear they are vastly more intelligent and wiser than we are; among other things, they do not seem to have deregulated their telephone system.

TEXAS

by James A. Michener

Random House; 1,096 pages; $21.95