THE VOICE IMITATOR

The Voice Imitator ($17.95; Dec. 1997; 115 pp.; 0-226-04401-7): A vision of a world ruled by impulse and accident emerges with ruthless clarity from this collection of 104 nihilistic vignettes (first published in 1978) by the late (193189) Austrian novelist and playwright. They're snippets of reportage and gossip, none longer than a page, describing perfectly ordinary people's often arbitrary descents into despair, madness, murder, or suicide (e.g., disappointed mountain climbers throw their guide off a cliff, then jump to their own deaths; a ``self-willed author'' shoots audience members who ``laughed in the wrong place'' at a performance of his play). Mordantly funny, thanks to the straightforward tone in which they're presented, these uneasy pieces are a perfect distillation of the graveyard wit and unsettling wisdom of one of the great literary pessimists.