by JULIET WATERS

This month I was sent two weirdly similar books: the recently re-released classic, Way of the Warrior, by anthropologist Howard Reid, and the recently repackaged experiences of undercover agent Joseph Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco, in The Way of the Wiseguy. Like many thinking people, given a choice between the profound and ancient wisdom of the martial arts masters, and the limited but endlessly recyclable wisdom of arguably brain-dead thugs - fughedaboudit.

I was only a couple of chapters into The Way of the Wiseguy when I discovered another choice, The Sopranos and Philosophy: I Kill Therefore I Am, a recent collection of academic essays on the series. I stuck with Pistone. When it comes to knowing the real mob, how could I prefer the musings of overeducated mooks to the accumulated knowledge of 20 years of undercover work infiltrating the mob as a wiseguy impersonator? Also, I don't get HBO but I'm currently keeping up to date by reading weekly installments of mob experts on The Sopranos at Slate.com. As we come closer to the end of the series, I find soothing the possibility that once experts have thoroughly explained how unrealistic The Sopranos really is, it'll be easier to let it go.

Unfortunately, Pistone's primer of mores of the underworld more often than not seems a well-timed money grab to squeeze a few more dollars out of desperate mob addicts. There's stuff in here that could only be a revelation to anyone who doesn't own a TV, like five things that will get you whacked (testifying, messing with a wiseguy's girlfriend or daughter, holding back on money, assaulting another wiseguy and talking to the cops), or that wiseguys like food.

There is, however, some interesting follow-up material. The reaction of the mob to the film Donnie Brasco is instructive. Though there is still a $500,000 contract on Pistone's life, the mob seem to have been fans. Not only did Pistone get a small part for the son of a wiseguy he knew while he was undercover, but a number of wiseguys were at the premiere, sharing the theatre with the FBI. Sadly, the wiseguys who helped him gain entry into the world of New York Mafia culture, were not around to see who played their parts. The fact that Pistone, however, is still alive and still working undercover seems to suggest that narcissism may trump all else in The Way of the Wise Guy. Perhaps they've always suspected he would write another book.

There's also an accompanying CD of an actual conversation between Pistone, as Brasco, and his mob mentor, Lefty Guns. This took place at a time when it looked like Brasco might get whacked because of a lie perpetuated by a rival wiseguy. For all his advice on keeping one's cool in dangerous situations, Pistone is clearly losing his when he believes his life might be in the hands of the relentlessly stupid Lefty. Thirty seconds of this stressful and maddeningly irrational conversation should be enough to convince anyone that realism is not something they should wish too hard for in mob pop culture.

The true Way of the Wiseguy - which Pistone is frank about, and quite good at conveying - is pretty dull and often sad. Apart from the odd murder, armed robbery, and depraved party, it's mostly sitting around bleakly decorated social clubs, playing gin rummy and eating. Whatever enlightenment there is comes from a life where the odds of being killed are significantly higher. Wiseguys are at least more conscious of their mortality. It is, however, a lonely life. Wiseguys avoid friendship because the closer you are to someone the more likely it is that this will be the person ordered to kill you when you fuck up. Read enough of these kinds of books, and The Way of the Average Life starts looking more enlightened all the time.

The Way of the Wiseguy by Joseph Pistone (aka Donnie Brasco), Running Press, hc, 223pp, $32.95