FRANK, WITH RELISH

At 80, Frank Sinatra has inspired four new books and as many generations of fans

RICHARD MERKIN

Even now, after all the years, the fights, the loves, and the blessed songs, we cannot seem to find the exact location of the soul of this disturbing man, this rogue troubadour, with his questionable associates, his broads, his ring-a-dingdings, and his mythic ability to disintegrate, sometimes in shame, and then reinvent himself, endlessly. As with Hemingway, but few others, each effort to define Frank Sinatra for keeps by scandalmonger or esteemed musicologist (or daughter, for that matter) seems destined to end a near miss or laughingly wide of the mark. (This season alone has seen the publication of four new books.) For when all the cigarette smoke has cleared and the bar rags have been hung up to dry, when the last waiter has gone home whistling "My Funny Valentine" or one of the others, what we are left with are dates and song titles, annotated laundry lists, if you will—dried roses but preciously few dead certainties other than the gorgeous music, the seven decades of taste and invention, and the uncanny instinct that has influenced every singer (and damned near every jazz musician) worthy of our concern. And more than a couple who aren't.

Someday Francis Albert Sinatra, born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1915, will bid his final "Excuse me while I disappear." Then we will be left with the definitive renditions of most of our finest popular songs. Along with his personal directions to heaven, to hell, and to love. Seen his way, of course.