Perry Como

Mel Brooks reminisces of wife Anne Bancroft as anniversary of their first meeting draws near. Mel Brooks has made audiences laugh for more than a half century, but it was his wife, the late Anne Bancroft, who made him smile.

Country star Steve Wariner channels Chet Atkins for his 11th Grammy nomination. Few people knew Chet Atkins like Steve Wariner.

Music hasn't really mattered much in American fiction. There are exceptions, of course. Eudora Welty's bravura short story ``Powerhouse'' reimagines Fats Waller. Don DeLillo's ``Great Jones Street'' lampoons rock so shrewdly it could be called ``Negatively 4th Street.'' John Updike's most famous hero, Harry Angstrom, prefers Perry Como to Frank Sinatra and marvels over the Bee Gees being ``white men who have done this wonderful thing of making themselves sound like black women.'' And so on. Yet those are anomalous instances. There is one American writer, however, whose fiction is the literary equivalent of a vast box set: a blissful, bizarro anthology of rock, jazz, pop, blues, country, show tunes, novelty numbers, you name it. Thomas Pynchon's novels are like a giant jukebox just waiting to happen. Some of the songs are real, some are imaginary. All of them Pynchon makes his own. No other American writer has put so much music into his fiction. McClintic Sphere, in ``V.,'' bears a mark

TV's Elly May Clampett is grateful for role, still loves 'critters' and country living. Donna Douglas still embodies Elly May Clampett, the critter-loving beauty from "The Beverly Hillbillies."

Obituaries in the news. Herbert G. Klein

Anna Karen Morrow, regular on `Peyton Place,' dies at 94. Anna Karen Morrow, an actress who had a regular role on the prime-time soap opera "Peyton Place" and also appeared on Broadway, in films and on numerous other television shows, has died. She was 94.