Yeah, okay, I know - that title. But it IS an attention-getter, and it got mine, because this is definitely a guy book, and I'm a guy, and, like the author, Darryl Ponicsan, I'm old, and sometimes I feel bad about mine too. So, that outa the way, I'm just gonna call this one Darryl's DICK book, okay? 'Cause here's the thing, I've been reading Darryl Ponicsan since his first book, THE LAST DETAIL (1970), probably still his best-known work, which was adapted into a classic film. So that's what? Omigod, that's FIFTY YEARS I've been reading Ponicsan! And he's written a baker's dozen other novels since then, and I've read them all but one, THE RINGMASTER, and I hope to get around to that one before too long.

I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY DICK (and that's the last time I'll spell it out) is Ponicsan's first non-fiction book, and it's kinda the one I've been wanting to read for all of those fifty years. I think I mighta written to him once and said he oughta write a memoir. Or maybe that was some other writer. Anyway, this odd collection of essays and lists is actually kinda like a memoir, because we learn something about his childhood in a Pennsylvania coal town ("I lived in a congenial but risky neighborhood. The feel of caked blood in my hair was familiar to me."), his parents ("I never had more than a few serious conversations with either one of them, few and far between, and brief"), his college years ("My father's idea. I thought it would be a waste of money"). We hear but briefly of his hitch in the US Navy (so read THE LAST DETAIL and CINDERELLA LIBERTY), but do learn about his trip west afterwards in a junker TR-3 to seek his fortune. His turn as a high school teacher also gets short shrift (so read GOLDENGROVE), but we do hear about his year or so as a social worker in LA during the Watts riots, and his education as a blonde white guy in black neighborhoods. And then he tells of his sudden success as a writer with that first Navy novel, and his subsequent adventures in Hollywood (Ponicsan was script writer/doctor for over 25 years) where he meets Robert Redford ("I went all aflutter … I thought no man should be so handsome"). And meeting Hef at the Playboy mansion, where he talked with Bill Cosby ("long enough to discover that he was, sadly, an a**hole") and displayed his "pinball wizard" skills to Linda Lovelace. There is almost nothing about a failed first marriage and divorce (so read AN UNMARRIED MAN). We learn of his color-blindness (check out the author photo and the pink suit) and his kinky opinions on beards and muffs. Oh yeah, and murses. And, threaded throughout all of these essays, most of them hilarious, he also gives us tantalizing tidbits of a forty-year love affair with his Mexican-American wife, whom he calls E.W., for "Exotic Woman." He first met her on a Malibu beach. She was in a bikini. He was in love.

Yes, hilarious. I found myself chuckling, chortling and breaking into guffaws, belly laughs and tears of laughter as I made my way through this little book. (I tried to read slowly, 'cause I wanted it to last.) But, as he tells us in the intro, where he explains that his DICK book is meant to be a guy kinda answer to Nora Ephron's I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK book -

"As Nora's book at times veers into some serious territory, there is a risk that this one will too, but it will all come out okay in the end."

And Ponicsan does indeed veer into some darker stuff in the final chapter, about the inevitability of death, the aches, pains, failings and indignities of old age (the author passed 80 a year or two back). And the "twelve surgeries over fourteen years, the same place for the same reason" he has endured, along with the "dress rehearsal for death and the void of general anesthesia." But there's also that "okay in the end" part, where he tells us, in a postscript, that things have taken a "dramatic turn for the better," and I am so glad to know that.

Bottom line: this is definitely a guy book. I laughed and laughed, and sometimes winced in recognition too. But when I tried to read some of the funniest parts to my wife, she didn't laugh. Her reactions were more of the wrinkled nose, "ee-ew" variety. But Darryl's DICK book is - most of the time - just plain laugh-out-loud hilarious. I loved it. Thanks for sharing, DP. This should be part of every old guy's library. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )