NONFICTION - Sept. 6, 1992

WHEN YOU’RE FROM BROOKLYN, EVERYTHING ELSE IS TOKYO by Larry King with Marty Appel (Little, Brown: $21.95; 240 pp.) . Radio personality Larry King, born Larry Zeiger in Brooklyn, has written what might be an extended treatment for a movie, called something like “Larry King: The Early Years.” Which is not to say that this memoir of a Brooklyn childhood is bad; just that it’s somewhat predictable, and written in an affectionate, soft-focus tone that makes the story seem like a cross between Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen. Edward and Jennie Zeiger came to the United States from Russia, where they and their two sons, Larry and Marty, had a hard but happy life until his father died of a heart attack at age 43. They moved to a new neighborhood, where King’s friends all had nicknames and did things like telling everyone at school that a kid with TB (who was merely in Arizona taking the cure) had died--so that they could raise money for a memorial and blow it on themselves instead, a great idea until the boy recovered early and returned to school. It’s all antic, charming stuff, awash in sentiment, ending on the day in 1957 when King headed for Miami and got a job at a small AM radio station. The story is bracketed by his thoughts, today, upon returning to the old neighborhood, but what’s in between is pure nostalgia.