Offside Undo.(Column)(Book Review)

Byline: Dutch Mandel

Brock Yates is the black sheep uncle we all wish we had. This comes in a late-night-gotta-sleep-dammit moment when I know full well that morning means espresso-fired synapses and still a mind of mush. Oh, and in the ayem there'll be plenty of tales to retell, in a schoolgirl whisper, around the fax machine. Thank Cannonball! World's Greatest Outlaw Road Race, $24.95, Motorbooks International, for this high-powered insomnia.

Understand where this registers on the High-Praise-O-Meter: See, while we are loath to comment on it in public, we do read what everyone else writes in this car magazine business. We critique our comrades-with relish and without mercy-every month; that's when we bitch about who did what, who did it right or wrong, and who gave us headaches. This is when slower monthly mags grace our in-boxes.

But writing car books or novels, often just the long form of navel gazing, is such a very hard art to master that when a good one comes along it mesmerizes like Linda Vaughn in spandex. Cannonball! does this, thanks in no small part to its mix of previously unseen photos, firsthand stories, urban legend and even agate copy for weenies who want scofflaw rotisserie league stats.

Maybe because of the unusual way I knew Brock did I read Cannonball! with extra interest. Around the house it was always that ``damn Yates'' this or that ``f***** Brock'' that, or some other wonderfully colorful description his co-worker brought to the dinner table from Car and Driver's offices. Brock forever lived the laissez-faire, foot-to-the-floor, wide-open lifestyle my ...