My Times

Corry spent more than three decades at the New York Times , leaving the paper from 1968 to 1971 for Willie Morris's Harper's before ending his affiliation with the ``paper of record'' in 1988. He is delightfully candid about portraying himself as a rather annoyingly naive and suggestible patsy in the 1960s who eventually developed his own news sense, and got in trouble for it in the 1980s with several pieces, especially one about Jerzy Kosinski, ghostwriters and the CIA. He is equally probing about the paper itself, which, he shows, is treated by its employees with a reverence usually reserved for religious institutions and which he feels has become the temple of political correctness. A TV critic for a while, Corry has little respect for TV news, and he dismisses the so-called New Journalism as fiction. The prevailing note in the book is honesty and that makes Corry's autobiography a treat to read. (Jan.)