Pumping Irony:: Working Out the Angst of a Lifetime

Washington Post syndicated columnist Kornheiser here collects his columns of the past eight years; the best entries are very funny, and the weakest are dull. He puts his worst foot forward with a leaden introduction and the labored piece from which he took the book's title. He then proceeds to such topics as kids, the vicissitudes of contemporary life, flying, driving, scandals in the news, women ogling men and family problems. Well worth the price of admission are his essays on the ``Life Coffin,'' an article that can be used as a living-room bookcase until it is needed for other purposes; a class for fearful airplane passengers, in which confessions by fellow students gave Kornheiser reasons for apprehension he had never thought of before; trendy new coffee bars with coffees that are far beyond the exotic. Fans will enjoy finding out that the Polish alphabet ``consists of only seven letters--Z, X, I, Y, K, C and S,'' and why Kornheiser, in rejecting trendy foods, came to bury fennel not to braise it. (Oct.)