Life Is Not a Rehearsal: A Memoir, by David Brudnoy (Doubleday, 298 pp, $22.95)
DAVID Brudnoy first wrote for this journal in 1968, immediately before which he was a Randian libertarian, before that a liberal/socialist, before that, a child. He attended high school in Minneapolis; then on to Yale, where he studied history and language, Japan and the Japanese his specialties. He did postgraduate work at Harvard, taught at a black college in Texas, served as an assistant professor in political science at Northeastern, received his PhD from Brandeis. He began to do radio commentary in Boston, sank roots in the talk-show trade, looked about unsuccessfully for an academic job as a historian, and decided finally to do his radio work full time. During this whole period he was an active (a very active) homosexual, and one day in 1994 he learned that he had AIDS, from which he very nearly died. This book is his autobiography.
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