THE AFTERLIFE DIET

NPR humorist and children's author Pinkwater (Chicago Days/Hoboken Nights, 1991, etc.) wrestles with the burning question even the Contract with America wouldn't touch: Is there weight loss after death? Dead editor Milton Cramer has been sent to a heaven for the ``metabolically different''—a paradise clearly modeled on a slightly seedy Catskills resort, complete with wall-to-wall fat guests, an exasperatingly skinny emcee, and God the Father as a borscht-belt comic. Aspiring author Milo Levi-Nathan isn't dead, but wishes he were, since dead is better than fat, even better than fat heaven. When he's not getting pep talks from his mother, Phyllis, an inspirational speaker with a difference (``Fat is the worst thing there is....Off yourself a pound at a time''), Milo's seeing Dr. Alan Plotkin, a therapist whose Psycho-Deli Associates works out of a lunchroom (``Have a knish, Milo'')—the first of a long line of counselors, quacks, and nudges who cater (heh heh) to the obese—or dashing off still another outline for a pulpy genre novel too zany to fit the straitjacketed conventions of Milton over at Harlone House. If you're wondering how Milton, who's died and gone to heaven, can be reading Milo's proposals for Mamzers from Cassiopea or The Diskountikon (which Milton rejects after losing the manuscript, only to have it turn up in an awkward new connection), you may not have the right temperament for this kitchen-sink fantasy—even though a final twist will clear up a surprising number of cosmic inconsistencies long after you'd lost hope. Funny? Yes, though the satire is too waggish to sting. What's left is some triple-distilled whimsy that Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Adams might have produced if their characters had all been as wide as they were tall.