BOOK REVIEW: MEMOIR : A Deliciously Dangerous Bore : CONFESSIONS OF A RAVING UNCONFINED NUT <i> by Paul Krassner</i> , Simon & Schuster, $23, 336 pages

The hyperbolic title of this comic memoir by Realist magazine editor and man-about-the-countercultural-town Paul Krassner sets the tone for the 336 pages that follow.

Make no mistake about it: Krassner is the thread that runs through the social revolution. He is the hub of the alternative wheel. Like Woody Allen’s Zelig, he seems to have been present at every important moment in recent left-wing history--or at least all of the marginally legal ones.

And just in case your version of the story had him cast as a supporting player, he wants you to know--anecdote by anecdote--what a bloody important fellow he is. Let’s give him his due. Krassner is one of those deliciously dangerous fellows, a facile writer with a subversive sense of humor. His opening story, of life as a child prodigy violinist being tortured by an onstage itch (at Carnegie Hall, no less) is a beautifully crafted little tale of agony and ecstasy.

He manages to define themes in his life without beating the revelations to death. He rarely misses a laugh, and he seems to have heard most of the material that other comics have used over time: I will never be able to think of Bob Hope in quite the same Spirit-of-America way again, having read Krassner’s recollection of Hope’s old radio routines.

But oh, is he in love with his life.

Are we to be spared nothing? We find out what his circumcision looks like. We find out, in a rather terrifying passage, how he elevated self-abuse (above the chin; mystified?) into a draft deferment. We find out what he did with Lenny, with Abbie, with Ellsberg, with Mae (Brussell, the conspiracy theorist)--and with Groucho and Steve Allen, because Krassner has believed in the power of cracking wise since he found that his onstage itch relief got him a headier response than did his violin playing.

It’s all fun to read, if you’re of a particular ideological bent. For a person of the right (which is to say, left) attitude and age (say, 35 to 60), Krassner is an outrageous little Pied Piper, leading us all backward through time, reminding us of excesses most of us have long since abandoned for Volvos and mortgages.

He has a wonderful ear for irony: He recalls dining with Allen, waiting for a CNN reporter who wanted to interview Allen twice--once, in case Lucille Ball survived surgery that evening, and once in case she didn’t. And he remembers Daniel Ellsberg presenting a beautiful quilt to Abbie Hoffman’s widow at a memorial service--which she returned to him so that they could repeat their moving performance at another event.

Clearly Krassner intends for us to appreciate life on the edge. But he inadvertently exposes the darker side of his long, strange trip.

There are passages along the way that make the reader cringe at Krassner’s insensitivity, at his willingness to do almost anything in the name of an outrageous good time. His daughter Holly, now in her late 20s, too often seems to be along for the ride as a novelty, as an entertainment for her father. When she was 7, he reports, she said, “Daddy, let’s kiss the way they do in the movies and on TV.”

Instead of saying anything that sounded vaguely paternal, he said, “Well, what do you mean?” Then he let her kiss him, all the while wondering what he would have said if someone had walked in: “ ‘Listen, this was her idea,’ I would’ve had to say. She was the aggressive one. . . .’ ”

Hello? Is there a father in the house? It doesn’t seem like it. There is, instead, a child masquerading in an adult’s body, concerned with the world only as it relates to him, ignoring his role in that little two-person universe. And it is this self-absorption that finally makes the book tiresome, making Krassner sound too much like a party boor who regales people with inflated stories of his escapades and forgets to ask how anybody else is feeling.

It’s too bad. He is, in fact, a wonderfully rude fellow with an outsized imagination and a healthy disrespect for the status quo. But he is a character actor and has no business hogging center stage.