How Not to Succeed

THE BOSS IS CRAZY, TOO by Mell Lazarus. 282 pages. Dial. $4.50.

A book, a Broadway musical, a movie. Authors die broke pursuing this three-way parlay, but Mell Lazarus seems headed for it with his first novel. It is already sold to Producer David Merrick (Oliver!) in New York, and three major studios have already made offers. Or rather, what Lazarus has sold is not a novel but a plot gimmick with grand comic possibilities.

Take the crooked, sadistic president of a trashy magazine publishing firm. Give him as fall guy one Carson Hempie, honest, hardworking, supremely naive art director in charge of the comic-book division. Have them conspire to drive their firm into bankruptcy to conceal a fraud by the president of the company. Result: a reverse twist to be titled "How to Fail in Business by Trying Very Hard."

Carson Hemple does try hard. To burn up $135,000 of working capital, this innocent painfully masters and practices the work slowdown, expense-record padding, kickbacks and complicated carelessness that his office colleagues have always found entirely natural. Along the way are funny vignettes, like the brain-storming session to think up sure-misfire ideas for new comic books; or the meeting that drives off a potential backer, an aged philanthropist devoted to support of mass culture.

In real life Author Lazarus writes and draws the comic strip Miss Peach, a pleasant series aimed at grownups in which cartoon kids utter mild whimsies and occasional home truths. In his novel Lazarus becomes massively juvenile, insists on the wild hilarity of pigeon droppings and funeral parlors. No? Just wait for the movie.

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