A couple of weeks ago I read, in an anthology of modern ghost stories by male authors, a story called "Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud," by one Clive Barker--possibly the wittiest thing I ever read. And so, full of enthusiasm and delight in the new-found, I ordered everything of Mr. Barker's that I could find in the library catalog; and in short order I was inundated under a weighty flood of the prolific Mr. Barker's novels, plays, movie scenarios, and short story collections. The plays were very good, but only the novel Sacrament, and one other short story, "In the Flesh," for the rest, came up to, or close to, the standard of "Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud." Thus we learn that being prolific is not necessarily a good thing.