Tuesday Night Football

Karras ( Even Big Guys Cry ) spent a year as commentator on ABC's Monday Night Football before moving into acting, and that experience, to judge by his new book, left him scarred for life. Tuesday is the ostensibly comic tale of Lazlo Horvath, ``the happiest man in the world,'' who finds himself thrust into the television booth for the midweek sports broadcast after a childhood of misadventures. Horvath, an accordion virtuoso, is an uneasy amalgam of the protagonists of Being There , The Tin Drum and Candide , an easy-going innocent at sea in a world of sharks. In telling his story, Karras and scriptwriter Graham pile cliche on cliche (television is ``nothing less than an Aladdin's lamp''). Obviously striving for the lightness of fantasy, they instead burden the narrative with leaden asides.Because Lazlo's world is composed primarily of television commercials--he styles himself ``the Jingle King''--the book often reads like a laundry list of product tie-ins. (For example, a scene in which Karl Madden appears is a virtual reprise of the actor's commercial for American Express.) When it isn't plugging brand names, the novel offers rather stale observations on subjects ranging from sexism at the TV networks to the mistreatment of Native Americans. (Sept.)