News & Notes

IN THE PINK
She was the oversexed adolescent of Shampoo, and the overbraided Princess Leia of Star Wars. But these days Carrie Fisher is writing her own roles. September will see the publication of her new book, Surrender the Pink, as well as the release of the movie based on her first novel, Postcards From the Edge, starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine. Fisher has already arranged a movie deal for Pink, which she will coproduce with Steven Spielberg. And she has just signed a new contract with Simon & Schuster for two more novels.

ALL ABOUT ELVIS
Elvis World, the only Elvis book written with the full cooperation of Graceland, is finally available in paperback (though without the snappy gold-glitter cover and plastic jacket that graced the hardcover edition). ''Just hop in the pink Sedan de Ville and come with us,'' say authors Jane and Michael Stern, chroniclers of American kitsch (Road Food, Sixties People). ''Even if you don't want to live there, Elvis World is an amazing place to visit.''

BYE-BYE BUNNY
Say good-bye to Rabbit Angstrom. In October Knopf will publish Rabbit at Rest, the fourth and last of John Updike's Rabbit books, in which his hero — who first appeared in 1960's Rabbit, Run — meets his end. But don't look for Updike's face on the cover of every magazine wishing to celebrate this event. The privacy-loving author has already turned down two cover stories. Knopf, which plans a first printing of 125,000, will have to promote the book the old-fashioned way — with advertising and store displays.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Louis Auchincloss usually writes about Manhattan men and old money. But his new novel, The Lady of Situations, just published by Houghton Mifflin, features a woman. Natica Chauncey, daughter of a ruined financier, makes her way through a male-dominated world. ''I got the idea for it when I picked up a manuscript I had written back at Yale, 50 years ago, about a woman on her own,'' says Auchincloss. ''I realized there was much I hadn't understood then about women's situations — particularly because, in my own family, women ruled the roost. They sat on the sofa eating chocolates and sent the men out to work.'' From such unpromising ashes a fledgling feminist is born.