THE DIABOLICAL DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH <i> by R. W. Jackson (Dell: $5.95) </i>

A shameless rip-off of Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary,” down to the doggerel verse and quotations from imaginary authors. Bierce’s satire was the product of a moral outrage that enabled him to thunder like an Old Testament patriarch and sting like a hive of killer bees. Lacking both the conviction and wit of his model, R. W. Jackson postures with the grace and originality of an 11th-grader trying to write a parody of his high school. Significantly, he fails to define “theft,” “plagiarism” and “literary grave robbing.”