Newsday from New York, New York • 60

The Trouble His boss calls him a very talented curmudgeon. WNYC talk show host Larry Josephson calls himself a rebel, a loner and an asocial member of my generation. Garth Hudson of The Band, sits down in front of a microphone, drops his scowl and begins to share his ego and a warm intellectuality with listeners in New York and Los Angeles and 21 other cities across the America Public Radio Network. On this night the topic is The Mind of Japan, but on another night it would have been womens sexuality, Norman Mailer, California cuisine, the Kurds, Barbara Ehrenreich, cross-dressing, the end of socialism, media coverage of the gulf war, Irving Howe, multiculturalism and political correctness, Janet Malcolm versus Joe McGin-ness, homelessness. Fathers Day, domestic violence or ads.

When his two hours of live on-aimess are over and Japan has been given the Josephson treatment of educated but emotional analysis punctuated with some jokey banter, the host quietly bids goodbye to his studio guests, gathers up his books and papers into a bulging briefcase, and heads back uptown for a midnight supper at the Brasserie on 53rd Street. Sometimes he just gets a pizza and takes it home to his Upper West Side apartment, where he consumes it in front of the television and in the reassuring company of his two cats, Kitty and White Kitty. Tonight, like most Saturday nights, doing the program has lifted his veil of grumpiness and made him feel good again. About half the time its exhilarating, he says later. And he decides not to quit at least not until next week.

About 75,000 people each week listen to Josephson, or a little less than the number who subscribe to such magazines as The Nation and The New Republic. The show has a larger audience in Los Angeles than in New York, which might seem odd except that its time slot on the West Coast, 6 to 8 p.m., is probably more advantageous. People can listen while theyre making dinner or getting ready to out for the evening. Wherever his listeners are, they tune in possibly because they hear something real in his cantankerousness, something apart from the soft shmooze and artificial provocation that cover so much of the radio dial. Technically, Modern Times is a talk show, but its a talk show that begins and ends with The Wil- By Sean Mitchell VERY WEEK, LARRY JOSEPHSON wants to quit.

He gets to thinking about the hours he puts into his Saturday-night WNYC public-radio show, Modern Times, about the money he gets in return for these hours none, according to him about his love-hate relationship with his boss, who he says does not appreciate him. He thinks about the fact that he ia 52, is not regularly employed, is in debt to credit-card companies, has no pension waiting for him, no savings and a daughter on her way to college. He thinks about the sublime folly of giving his life to public radio, whftv even the good-paying jobs can make teachers' salaries look appealing. Josephson, in fact, is likely to be grousing about these very matters as he glides slowly, like a Jewish Buddha on casters, through the studios of WNYC-FM (93.9), on the 25th floor of the Municipal Building in lower Manhattan early on a Saturday evening before his live show goes on the air. Staff members scurry about searching for guests who havent arrived, trans-oceanic telephone connections are being tested for clarity, a substitute engineer inquires about Josephson's monitor levels and Josephson barks back that they are much too loud.

How long has Larry been in this mood? the engineer asks someone in the control room. But then 9 p.m. arrives, and the bearded, bulky host who bears a passing resemblance to organist.