WHEN HENRY MET ZSA ZSA

"Things got more personal," she writes, "with Henry showing signs of making an amorous approach to me."

And then -- beep! beep! beep! beep! Kissinger's beeper broke the erotic reverie. The president was summoning him to San Clemente at precisely the wrong moment! Was the world in crisis? Or was Nixon, that ever-playful practical joker, just toying with his aide's mind . . . or whatever? Either way, Kissinger promptly jumped into his black sedan and zoomed down Zsa Zsa's driveway. But then -- crash! boom! bang! Big Hank somehow managed to get the car entangled in Zsa Zsa's electronic gates! It was a mass of dents and scrapes, and Kissinger was aghast. "Oh, my God," he said, "this is President Nixon's car!"

But wait. There's more. Zsa Zsa sent Kissinger flowers, and he called to thank her: "My whole staff looks at me differently since I got flowers from you." Later, when she was appearing in a play in Boston, he called to ask her out again. She accepted. On the night in question, though, Kissinger canceled out. Peeved, Zsa Zsa asked why.

"I can't fly down because we're invading Cambodia tomorrow," Kissinger said. "It's a big secret, you are the first person outside the White House who knows about it."

Well, there you have it: a little side trip into the history of our time, an anecdote that illuminates the psyches of those wild, wacky guys who run our world. And it appears in that most mocked of literary forms -- the celebrity autobiography!

But wait. There's even more. Lots more. One Lifetime Is Not Enough is packed with more than enough for a dozen lifetimes. Zsa Zsa knew just about everybody who was anybody, frequently in the biblical sense: Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, lured her to his lair when she was a 15-year-old virgin, gave her a puff from his hookah and a sip of raki and deflowered her. George Bernard Shaw slipped his hand onto her thigh. Greta Garbo gave her a big wet kiss on the mouth. Charlie Chaplin gave her a cocker spaniel and said, "You are too bright for me." Jimmy Hoffa offered her $10,000 to appear at his wife's birthday party. Elvis whispered, "When can I see you again?" Errol Flynn propositioned her. So did Warren Beatty and Marlon Brando and Richard Burton and Sean Connery. Bill Paley promised her a TV show if he could have his way with her. H.L. Hunt sent a private plane and a marriage proposal but she declined both. Hotel mogul Conrad Hilton married her. So did actor George Sanders. And the inventor of the Barbie doll. And the lawyer who handled her divorce from the inventor of the Barbie doll. And five other guys.

And then there were the presidents: Kennedy took her out but he was "far too promiscuous for my taste." Nixon called her for advice on foreign policy toward Hungary. Ford danced with her at the White House and whispered, "If I weren't married, the two women I'd want to go to bed with are you and Ann-Margret." And Reagan held her hand in a touching gesture of solidarity after she was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills cop. It was that infamous miscarriage of justice that earned Zsa Zsa a horrific 72-hour sentence in the El Segundo City Jail -- a place where, for the first time since childhood, she could not wear her diamond earrings to bed, a hellish place where drunks pounded on walls and screamed obscenities, where she choked back "tears of self pity" and gave herself a good talking-to: "How can you cry, Zsa Zsa Gabor? You who have been through so much in life, who have escaped the Nazis, outwitted the Communists, defied millionaires and tycoons, captivated movie stars and moguls, and have remained fearless in the face of all manner of intimidation and danger . . ."

The book is an epic! It's a blockbuster! It's a wild roller coaster ride through the 20th century! It's a book so packed with mythic characters and magical events that no novelist could possibly match it, except perhaps Gabriel Garcia Marquez at his most baroque.

Which makes it a perfect example of why the celebrity autobiography has overthrown the novel and become America's reigning literary genre.

Huns at the Gates of Literature

Future scholars will pinpoint the exact historical moment when the celebrity autobiography became king of the literary jungle: It happened in 1992.

It was a time when bookstore shelves groaned under the weight of the literary output of Zsa Zsa and Ollie North and Joan Rivers (her second memoir) and Steve Allen (his second too) and Buffalo Bob Smith (Howdy Doody's sidekick) and Darryl Strawberry and Daryl Gates and Frances Lear (Norman's ex) and Sam Walton and Charles Barkley and Sheila MacRae and Geraldo Rivera (who called his book Exposing Myself) and Katharine Hepburn, whose opus had the ultimate celebrity autobiography title: Me.

But sheer volume wasn't what put the genre over the top this year -- novels still outsell autobiographies -- it was the way the celebrity autobiography ricocheted around American culture like a trick billiards shot. Geraldo Rivera, the smarmy talk-show host who published a slimy kiss-and-tell celebrity autobiography, appeared in a made-for-TV movie play- ing a smarmy talk-show host who publishes a slimy kiss-and-tell autobiography and is then murdered. And Oliver North promoted his celebrity autobiography by appearing on the TV show "Wings," playing himself on a promo tour for his celebrity autobiography. And novelist Avery Corman, author of Kramer vs. Kramer, published The Big Hype, a comic novel about a failed novelist who achieves literary success only after a crafty show- biz mogul packages him as a celebrity author. And Patti Davis, who had already written three novels about how rotten it was to grow up in the Reagan family, came out with The Way I See It, a celebrity autobiography about how rotten it was to grow up in the Reagan family. And, last but hardly least, the White House announced that Barbara Bush had earned $889,176 in royalties from the sales of Millie's Book, a celebrity auto- biography that she had ghostwritten for her dog.

Eight hundred eighty-nine thousand bucks for the as-told-to autobiography of a celebrity dog! Eat your heart out, Saul Bellow!

Of course, the Huns of the celebrity autobiography have been storming the citadel of literature for years. You could see it in 1987 right here in Washington at the American Booksellers Association convention. As always, the publishers brought out their hot current authors for display, but this time they were mostly celebrity autobiographers -- Tip O'Neill, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Ben and Jerry, Barry Manilow, Bill Cosby, Chuck Berry, Betty White and Vanna White. There were, of course, some actual novelists present too: Tom Clancy and Jerzy Kosinski showed up, but they looked a little dazed amid the hype and hoopla, like blacksmiths lost in a Cadillac showroom.

And why shouldn't novelists be a little dazed? The phenomenon of the celebrity autobiography has gone far beyond the ken of even the most imaginative novelist. In 1979, Joseph Heller published Good as Gold, a satirical novel about, among other things, a president who spends his first year in the White House writing a memoir of his first year in the White House called My Year in the White House. That was pretty funny satire for a few years, until Ed Koch published two memoirs during his tenure as mayor of New York, thus reducing Heller from a brilliant literary satirist to a mere literary naturalist.

Obviously, the celebrity autobiography is no longer simply a medium in which aged actors and jocks recall their careers in the tranquillity of retirement. Now it is the literary corollary to Warhol's law; everybody who's famous for 15 minutes gets to write a memoir. Think of Mary Beth Whitehead, Ginny Foat, Morton Downey Jr., Judith Exner, Roxanne Pulitzer -- autobiographers all.

Sub-genres proliferate. The post-indictment celebrity autobiography: Gordon Liddy, the Mayflower Madam, Ollie North. The celebrity businessman autobiography: Iacocca, Trump, T. Boone Pickens. The child-star-turned-dope-fiend celebrity autobiography: Drew Barrymore of "E.T." fame and Lauren Chapin, who played Kitten on "Father Knows Best." The disillusioned political wife autobiography: Margaret Trudeau, Kitty Dukakis. Not to mention autobiographies by celebrities whose main claim to fame is that they knew another celebrity intimately: Richard Pryor's ex-wife, John Belushi's widow, Jim Morrison's girlfriend, Liberace's lover. Celebrity autobiographies by people who became celebrities by interviewing celebrities: Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Larry King, Nancy Collins, Rona Barrett. Celebrity autobiographies by people who aren't actually celebrities but think they ought to be: Frances Lear, Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew, Rocky Aoki of the Benihana of Tokyo restaurant chain.

And, of course, the White House dog celebrity autobiography.

These days, celebrity autobiographies have begun to reproduce, spawning other celebrity autobiographies. In 1988, for example, Donald Regan, chief of staff to Ronald Reagan, published For the Record, a memoir revealing that Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer named Joan Quigley about the president's schedule. In 1989, Nancy Reagan published her own celebrity autobiography, My Turn, denying that Quigley had made any important presidential decisions. Which caused an angered Quigley to write her own celebrity autobiography to rebut Reagan's rebuttal of Regan. "What she has left out about the way she used astrology and my ideas would fill a book," Quigley wrote bitterly in What Does Joan Say? "I now feel it is appropriate for me to write one."

Meanwhile, the old tradition of one autobiography per celebrity is now totally passe. Shirley MacLaine, for example, has published seven. (So far.) Her fifth celebrity autobiography, It's All in the Playing, was an account of her adventures filming the TV miniseries version of her third celebrity autobiography, Out on a Limb. And it contained an account of the book promo tour for her fourth celebrity autobiography, Dancing in the Light. Her fans now eagerly await her eighth celebrity autobiography, which will no doubt be an account of the trauma of proofreading her seventh celebrity autobiography, Dance While You Can.

By now, the genre is so well established that celebrity autobiographers quote the passages about themselves from other celebrity autobiographies. Zsa Zsa, for example, quotes Conrad Hilton's, George Sanders's and Bob Hope's, although she somehow forgot to quote from her mother Jolie's memoirs.

Considering all this frenzied activity in a newly ascendant literary form, one would suspect that dozens of assistant professors of literature would be eager to abandon work on the 412th dissertation on "Water as Metaphor in the Poetry of John Donne" and start breaking new critical ground with a monograph on "Eros and Evacuation: The Bathroom as Celebrity Trysting Spot in Geraldo Rivera's Exposing Myself."

But no. Academicians turn up their noses at celebrity autobiographies. They sneer. They mock. They condescend. The fools! Think of the material they're missing, the theses they could write! For a PhD in English: "Songs of Myself: Literary Antecedents of the Celebrity Autobiography," or "Deconstructing the Celebrity Autobiography." For a doctorate in philosophy: "Metaphysics and Mysticism in the Celebrity Autobiography."

And, of course, for a doctorate in anthropology (and a lucrative book contract): "The Mating Habits of the American Celebrity."

Songs of Myself: Literary Antecedents Of the Celebrity Autobiography

Celebrity autobiographies are not new in America, of course. Benjamin Franklin wrote one that's considered a classic. So did Ulysses S. Grant and Emma Goldman and Malcolm X.

For over a century, many of the most famous and infamous characters in America have written autobiographies -- P.T. Barnum, Buffalo Bill Cody, Big Bill Haywood, Geronimo, Jack Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Andrew Carnegie, Mother Jones, Willie Sutton.

Even Walden could be considered a celebrity autobiography if you want to stretch the definition of celebrity to include guys who were fairly well known around Concord, Mass. On the very first page, Thoreau provides, no doubt unwittingly, a defense of the genre: "I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew so well . . . Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life . . ." Little did he know that Geraldo would take him up on it. Thoreau also introduced a device that would be echoed by later celebrity autobiographers: listing his living expenses. Thoreau's were small, of course -- $2.43 for secondhand windows, $3.90 for nails, 14 cents for hinges and screws. Contemporary autobiographers illustrate celebrity inflation: "A $200 pair of Gucci loafers, de rigueur for just kicking around, or a $300 Louis Vuitton handbag might seem extravagant," writes Roxanne Pulitzer, "but to my insecure mind they were essential . . ." And Zsa Zsa ups that ante considerably: "I wore a green-sequined dress, a $2 million diamond necklace, a $3 million diamond ring, and $150,000 pear-shaped diamond drop earrings . . ."

Of course, the true grandfather of literary self-celebration is Walt Whitman, the good gray poet who wrote "Song of Myself." Whitman's "myself" was metaphorical; he really meant the poem as a Song of Everyman. Unfortunately, ce- lebrities have taken him literally, and they've been singing songs, arias, whole operas of themselves ever since. They're particularly influenced by lines like "I celebrate myself and I sing myself" and "I dote on myself, there is a lot of me and all so luscious." One passage in the poem presages the phenomenon of the celebrity adulterer's kiss-and-tell auto- biography:

I turn the bridegroom out of bed and

stay with the bride myself,

I tighten her all night to my thighs and

lips.

Come to think of it, maybe Geraldo Rivera would have gotten better reviews if his account of his tryst with Sen. Jacob Javits's wife, Marion, had been written in free verse:

Marian {sic} and I moved into her

mirrored bathroom

(Where we could lock the door);

It was one of the most thrilling sexual

experiences I've ever had . . .

On the other hand, maybe not.

How to Read A Celebrity Autobiography

Pick up the book. Look at the front cover. Note the photograph of the author, who is also the narrator and the main character. You've seen this person on TV, which is reassuring, particularly when you realize that novels are about people you've never seen on TV, people who don't even exist and consequently couldn't possibly write about their affairs with other people you've seen on TV.

Turn to the photos in the middle of the book. You can learn a lot about celebrities by the pictures in their autobiographies. Wilt Chamberlain included copies of the magazine ads he's appeared in. Donald Trump put in pictures of the models of his buildings. Zsa Zsa Gabor included two photos of her closet, which is only slightly smaller than Saks Fifth Avenue. And Vanna White included a page from her 1971 diary: "I am now in Dallas, Texas, learning about Jesus Christ. It is fantastic. All 74 of us are there. Chuck and I went to Holiday Inn North lounge."

Now, notice how the photos prove what you've always suspected, that celebrities all know one another. There's Lee Iacocca with Bill Cosby, with Sophia Loren, with Henny Youngman. There's Zsa Zsa with Nixon, with Reagan, with the Beatles, with Mr. Ed. There's Geraldo with Streisand, with Castro, with Charlie Manson -- and all by himself, buck naked except for a strategically placed hat. Note that Geraldo's photos are credited to the "Geraldo Rivera collection." Ponder the concept of a "Geraldo Rivera collection." Recoil in horror.

Read the jacket flap. It's frequently the best writing in the book, and it provides a preview of the thrills contained within. Vanna White's flap says: "You'll go with her on her early modeling assignments in Atlanta, watch her land bit parts in Hollywood movies, and feel the suspense as she auditions for 'Wheel of Fortune' . . ." Patti Davis's flap says: "Yet Davis can never fully comprehend what happened behind closed doors at the Reagan household, and her father's denial of these shocking scenes . . ." Sheila MacRae's flap promises: "an unforgettable scene in which President Johnson tried to bed her in the White House." Tell yourself: "Hmmmm, that sounds interesting." Turn to the index. Look up LBJ. Turn to Page 112. Read the story of LBJ taking MacRae on a tour of the White House. Marvel at the line he uses when they reach the presidential boudoir: "Secret Service man's guardin' the door. There's no way anybody'll disturb you and your President."

Mosey around in the index. Look for odd items. "Lysergic acid. See LSD," it says in MacRae's index. Turn to Page 77. Read how Cary Grant told Sheila that taking LSD every day transformed him into a heterosexual.

Notice how some celebrity indexes are mini-autobiographies in themselves. Read the listing under "Chamberlain, Wilt" in Wilt Chamberlain's A View From Above. It covers everything from "adolescence of, 11-12" to "dislikes of, 189-203, 222-23, 237-38" to "feats of, 44-45, 94-95, 124-25, 139-41, 190-91, 251-52" to "women and, xi, 3-4, 16-17, 29, 30-31, 32, 54, 55, 85, 86-89, 95, 184, 185, 209, 235, 240-41, 246, 251-57, 258, 260-61, 262, 264-65, 267-68." Imagine what it would be like to have a job indexing celebrity autobiographies. Recoil in horror.

Turn to the front of the book. Check out the chapter titles. Celebrity autobiographies have some of the greatest chapter titles in all of American literature. They range from Joan Quigley's "How Merv Griffin Introduced Me to Nancy Reagan" to Zsa Zsa's "Interlude: The Men in My Life After George and Before Herbert" to Charles Barkley's "I Don't Mind Being a Jerk" to Chamberlain's "On Life: Things That Piss Me Off."

Turn to the acknowledgments. Celebrities give great acknowledgments. Note the literary influence of the Oscar acceptance speech on the prose style of celebrity acknowledgments: "Without the love, support and help of many wonderful people, it would have been impossible for me to write this book," writes Vanna White, who proceeds to thank her publisher, her publisher's boss, her publisher's personnel director, her editor, her first coauthor, her second coauthor, her father, her brother, her manager, several friends, Merv Griffin, Pat Sajak and the "City of North Myrtle Beach." Which is a fairly modest list by celebrity standards. Sydney Biddle Barrows, the Mayflower Madam, penned seven pages of acknowledgments, including a list of 172 call girls she employed, in alphabetical order from Adrienne and Alanna through Heather I and Heather II all the way to Victoria and Wren.

Notice how the acknowledgments tend to reveal the wackiness of the celebrity autobiographer. Ultra Violet, the Warhol superstar, felt compelled to acknowledge "the white bird that landed on my terrace at the beginning of this book and remained with me, looking over my shoulder as I typed." Oliver North notes in his acknowledgments that he and his coauthor "decided to treat this book as a covert operation" and consequently wrote it during secret meetings in a motel room at Dulles Airport, with Ollie hiding in the bathroom when room service waiters appeared. Ask yourself: Is Ollie North the '80s answer to Maxwell Smart?

Now you have finished the preliminaries. You are ready to begin. Turn to Page 1. Start skimming.

Deconstructing The Celebrity Autobiography

Many otherwise discerning readers are under the impression that celebrity autobiographies are merely rags-to-riches stories. This is not true. Actually, they are rags-to-riches-and-fame-to-existential-angst-to-redemption-to-riches-and-fame-coupled-with-a-new-found-inner-

Of course, these categories are not rigid. The celebrity aimee autobiography is a forgiving form. The rags

For Zsa Zsa, born to a wealthy, happy Hungarian family, the rags period consisted of her early days in Holl

Ultimately, the heroes and heroines of the celebrity autobiography rise above such bitter twists of fate to

But the good times cannot roll on forever, alas. There's always a serpent lurking in the garden. Soon, our

Fortunately, there is redemption and resurrection, and joy cometh in the morning. Our celebrity heroes and

Along with these inspiring personal transformations comes a new-found sense of inner peace, sometimes coupl

"So if this book reaches but one parent, so that he or she can find compassion in his or her heart for the

Metaphysics and Mysticism In the Celebrity Autobiography

"Biographies," wrote Mark Twain, "are but the clothes and buttons of the man," because they capture only hi

Wilt Chamberlain would agree. His first book, Wilt, was a "clothes and buttons" autobiography that describe

In a series of aphorisms -- he calls them "Wiltisms" -- he meditates on myriad subjects. He cogitates about

Like Leonardo da Vinci -- "one of my idols" -- Chamberlain combines philosophy with practical ideas: "I bel

And, of course, he ponders the meaning of life: "I like to relate life to games because I think life is a g

Of course, Chamberlain is not the only celebrity autobiographer engaged in deep philosophical speculation.

Celebrities are natural philosophers. "Like a lot of people," writes Roxanne Pulitzer, "I have felt the nee

Far from being the vapid airheads of caricature, celebrities are frequently downright scholarly. "I begin r

Of course the undisputed queen of consciousness expansion is Shirley MacLaine. In MacLaine's books, all eve

"I began by saying that since I realized I created my own reality in every way, I must therefore admit that

Other guests dispute these theories, but that doesn't bother MacLaine.

"While the others expressed their objections, I felt I was creating them to object, so that I could look at

Which is enough to make the metaphysically impaired reader long for Zsa Zsa, whose mental mill grinds out a

The Mating Habits of The American Celebrity

Unlike jackals, elephant shrews and dik-diks, celebrities generally do not mate for life.

If they did, celebrity autobiographies would be a lot thinner and a lot duller, if they existed at all. For

For decades, anthropologists have pondered the issue of celebrity mating habits: Are they the product of bi biology. Celebrities simply have a greater physical need to mate than do regular people.

"If I don't do it every day," writes Willie Nelson, "I get a headache."

Or, as Geraldo Rivera describes his own mating habits: "I was like the goldfish who eats himself to death because food is available. Or the drunk. Or the junkie . . . I was a pig -- a grunting, voracious pig in heat . . ."

Some celebrities, however, see their mating habits as a philosophical choice, not a mere biological imperative. "I have always believed," writes Wilt Chamberlain, "that there is more than one true love for a person." How many more? "If I had to count my sexual encounters," he adds, "I would be closing in on twenty thousand women." Which comes out to "1.2 women a day, every day since I was 15 years old."

Incredible! Particularly when you consider that he still had enough energy left over to play basketball, write two celebrity autobiographies, think great thoughts and design a more efficient dining room table.

Celebrities can -- and frequently do -- mate with regular people, but they seem to prefer liaisons with other celebrities. They also enjoy describing these liaisons in their celebrity autobiographies, much to the delight of those readers whose interest is not purely literary. And so Patti Davis decribes her affairs with Bernie Leadon of the Eagles and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and Timothy Hutton and Kris Kristofferson. And Ultra Violet describes her liaisons with Salvador Dali and Milos Forman and Rudolf Nureyev. And Geraldo Rivera describes his affairs with Marion Javits and Bette Midler and Margaret Trudeau and Chris Evert, not to mention a not-quite-consummated liaison with Liza Minelli in the bathroom at Studio 54.

But it is Zsa Zsa Gabor who reveals the amazingly complex web of amour that binds the celebrity world together. Zsa Zsa, for example, married Conrad Hilton and then had an affair with his son, Nicky Hilton, who was married to Elizabeth Taylor, who later married Richard Burton, who also had an affair with Zsa Zsa. After divorcing Hilton, Zsa Zsa married George Sanders, who then had an affair with Marilyn Monroe and another affair with heiress Doris Duke, which prompted the jealous Zsa Zsa to get even by having a wild affair with Duke's ex-husband, playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, who one day announced, as they lay in bed: "My darling, I have to leave you. I need money and Barbara Hutton has offered me five million dollars if I marry her. Then I'll come back to you in a few weeks." At which point, Sanders -- you remember him, he was her husband -- burst into the room with two detectives, and Rubirosa ran naked into the bathroom and locked the door and . . . well, you get the idea.

And it is the incomparable Zsa Zsa, alone among celebrity autobiographers, who reveals the actual mating calls uttered by the celebrities in their attempts to woo her:

Director Alexander Korda: "Take your clothes off."

Bill Paley, head of CBS: "I'll give you a wonderful TV show if you'll sleep with me."

Errol Flynn: "Darling, come out to my house and sleep with me tonight. When you wake up in the morning, you will look out of my window and see stallions outside -- and then you will see what a stallion I am."

Frank Sinatra: "I am not going home until you make love to me."

Richard Burton: "Instead of going to that party, why don't we go to bed, my darling?"

Richard Harris: "I'm not going to go. I'm going to sleep with you."

Marlon Brando (while drunk on the "Tonight" show): "Zsa Zsa, a man can only do one thing with you: throw you down and . . ."

Obviously, celebrities are not much more suave and debonair than regular people. At least not in the presence of Zsa Zsa. What is it about her? Does she exude some kind of musk that drives men wild? Perhaps chemists should study her, maybe take some tissue samples. They might finally be able to isolate the elusive celebrity ion.

In Zsa Zsa's book, about the only male human being who does not either marry her, have an affair with her or crudely proposition her is the burglar who breaks into her Bel Air mansion in the dead of the night, points a gun at her and says, "This is a stickup, get up."

"But I'm naked," Zsa Zsa replies. "Please let me put something on."

"Stay nude," the burglar replies as he scoops up her jewelry. "I'm not a sex maniac."

Which no doubt explains why he never became a celebrity.

Great Moments in The Celebrity Autobiography

Even its most avid aficionados will admit that, as a genre, the celebrity autobiography cannot match the novel when it comes to plot, characters, psychological insights, social commentary, good prose, that kind of stuff. But that's okay be- cause the celebrity autobiography has its own subtle aesthetics. It is a me- dium for anecdotes, a forum for delicious moments.

Like life itself, the average celebrity autobiography contains a few moments of high drama and low comedy surrounded by vast stretches of sheer mind-numbing tedium. But those moments are so marvelous that connoisseurs of the genre are willing to wade -- or at least skim -- through reams of hideous drivel to find them. Some day, a smart publisher will put out a collection called Great Moments in the Celebrity Autobiography.

This future blockbuster bestseller will no doubt include the scene in Mayflower Madam in which the author is incarcerated in a New York jail ("an appallingly depressing place," she notes) and suddenly is moved into a cell that -- horrors! -- has no television set: "As the guard was putting me in my new cell, I pleaded with her: 'I realize you may have to say no to this,' I said, 'but is there any way that you can put me back in the holding pen so I can watch "All My Children" at one o'clock? Erica's getting married to Mike today and Adam is trying to stop her. I couldn't bear to miss it. Please?' " To which the guard replies: "Well, all right." Great Moments will also no doubt include the scene in Willie Nelson's Willie when the hero -- who claims that he smokes pot daily in order to "not be a turkey" -- tokes up at America's most famous address. "Sitting on the roof of the White House in Washington, D.C., late at night with a beer in one hand and a fat Austin torpedo in the other, I drifted into a reflective mood . . ."

The book will probably include the scene in Shirley MacLaine's It's All in the Playing in which MacLaine's medium goes into a trance and emerges in the character of the guy who wrote the Book of Revelation, who promptly auditions for the chance to play himself in MacLaine's miniseries.

It will no doubt include two scenes from Patti Davis's memoir, scenes that would be edited out of a satirical novel about the rich for being too heavy-handed but which are perfectly appropriate in a celebrity autobiography. In the first, Ronald Reagan explains the evils of big government to his preteen daughter by showing her how much money in taxes was taken out of a check he earned for the backbreaking labor of appearing in a Crest commercial. In the second, the family gardener steps inside the house, complaining that he doesn't feel well, and Nancy Reagan berates him for getting mud on the floor and then slams the door in his face. He manages to stumble next door, where the neighbors call an ambulance because he is having a heart attack.

Great Moments in the Celebrity Autobiography will certainly include a chapter titled "Great Lines in the Celebrity Autobiography." Which will certainly include Roxanne Pulitzer on her husband's attempts to educate her in the folkways of Palm Beach: "He taught me about food -- to drink champagne instead of milk, not to drink from the finger bowl, what fork to use, and never to gulp down the sorbet that was served between courses . . ." And Lauren Chapin on addiction: "Because of my drug habit, I was real crabby." And Zsa Zsa on her days as Ataturk's mistress: "So it was that I, Zsa Zsa Gabor of Budapest, Hungary, a coquettish fifteen-year-old who loved dogs, horses, and the admiration of all around her, held the fate of some of the most powerful men in Turkey in the palm of her delicate little hands." And German actor Klaus Kinski on his medical problems: "I actually get venereal disease more often than most people catch colds." And Kinski on director Werner Herzog: "He should be thrown to the crocodiles alive! An anaconda should throttle him slowly! The sting of a deadly spider should paralyze him! His brain should burst from the bite of the most poisonous of all snakes!" And Vanna White's opening line: "About a year ago, when my publisher approached me to write this book, I wasn't really sure what it would be about." The book will certainly contain several sections from Exposing Myself -- the scene in which Geraldo brings two flamboyant hookers to a bar mitzvah in Beverly Hills or the scene in which Geraldo attempts to acquire the Fuller Brush and Hoover vacuum cleaner franchises for the entire continent of Africa. Or the amazing scene in his agent's office after Geraldo has been fired from his $1 million job at ABC, and he's broke and desperate and his agent reveals that Tribune Broadcasting has tendered an offer for his services.

"How much?" Geraldo asks.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars," the agent replies

"For what?"

"They've got some deal with a vault that supposedly belonged to Al Capone," the agent says. "It's been sealed for years. They want to open it on live television."

"What do you think?" Geraldo asks.

"It's beneath you," says the agent.

That's a great line -- beneath Geraldo! What a concept! -- but the author immediately tops it:

"It was, and so I told Jim to ask for fifty thousand dollars."

Whither the Celebrity Autobiography?

A specter is haunting the celebrity autobiography -- the specter of the celebrity novel.

To casual observers, the two genres are frequently confused. Some readers don't think twice about buying a novel by Marilyn Quayle or Ivana Trump, particularly since the Quayle book is about politics and the Trump book is about a former model who marries an egomaniacal real estate baron. Unsophisticated readers are duped into believing that they are getting the inside poop. But they're not. These books are not memoirs, they are just made-up stories! Which is why the celebrity novel represents the single most potent threat to the existence of the celebrity autobiography in the entire history of the genre.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with the novel per se. The genre has a long, distinguished history and many admirers. But, as literary insiders have known for years, novels are nothing more than carefully concocted stories about people and events that never existed. In short, a pack of lies. In fact, novelist William Faulkner made up a whole county in Mississippi, populated it with people who never really existed and shamelessly wrote scads of books about it. Was he arrested for fraud? No, he was awarded the Nobel Prize! Of course, this kind of thing can be harmless fun, but ask yourself: Is this what we really want from our celebrities? Do we want to give these people six-figure advances and then let them just go out and make up any old stuff? How will we know if the torrid menage a trois with Casey Stengel and Chairman Mao in the opening chapter of some actress's novel really happened or is just some overheated fantasy?

The solution is simple: Readers must demand the truth and nothing but the truth from their celebrities. When they do, the celebrity novel will end up in the dustbin of history, right down there with the epic poem.

Fortunately, most literary observers agree that the celebrity autobiography will never completely die out, simply because many celebrities will always be willing, even eager, even downright desperate, to chronicle their lives in prose.

Evidence for this view appeared in a recent issue of People magazine, which reported that Madonna was discussing the prospect of writing "a book of her sexual fantasies, her thoughts, the meanderings of her erotic mind." Not only that, but the editor who discussed this with Madonna -- Judith Regan, a vice president and senior editor at Simon & Schuster -- was reported to be "currently working on celeb autobiographies with Kathie Lee Gifford, Georgette Mosbacher and others."

"And others!" It's a simple phrase but it sets the mind to churning like Mark Twain's mill, grinding out all kinds of possibilities. Warren Beatty? Mick Jagger? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Liz Taylor? Pee-wee Herman? Just the thought of it quickens the pulse. Sean Penn? Gary Hart? Whoopi Goldberg? Tai Collins? Newt Gingrich? It's hard not to get caught up in the excitement. Al Sharpton? David Duke? Hammer? Sister Souljah? Charo? Thoughts like these can give a person a reason to go on living. Ed McMahon? Duke Zeibert? Deion Sanders? Luke Perry? Bambi Bembenek? Axl Rose?

Of course, that's all simply speculation. But we know from a highly reliable source (Zsa Zsa's autobiography) that Francesca Hilton -- daughter of celebrity autobiographers Conrad Hilton and Zsa Zsa Gabor, and granddaughter of celebrity autobiographer Jolie Gabor -- is now working on her very own celebrity autobiography! Which would mean three generations of Gabor autobiographies! The mind reels! Historians eagerly await her revelations on the now-famous Kissinger-Gabor date!

And America's reigning literary genre marches on into a new millennium.