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S P E A K I N G F R E E L Y BY NAT HENTOFF KNOPF 336 PAGES NONFICTION BY DAN CRYER | Nat Hentoff is uncommonly admirable, but "Speaking Freely" isn't. And it should be, since this scrappy, unpredictable troublemaker of a journalist has enjoyed such a long and memorable career -- notably as a reporter on jazz at Down Beat and a columnist at the Village Voice and Washington Post. Hentoff has crossed paths with heavies as diverse as Duke Ellington, Malcolm X, Bob Dylan and John Cardinal O'Connor. He's crossed swords with the FBI on the right and the Voice itself on the left. He's a civil libertarian who broke with the ACLU, a racial integrationist who challenges black anti-Semitism, a Vietnam War opponent who went on to attack the Vietnamese for human rights abuses, a Jew who regards Israel as a despoiler of Palestinian rights, a feminist who believes abortion is murder. Like Ellington, one of his idols, Hentoff takes pride in being "beyond category." What a career! What a life! A man for whom controversy is his daily bread! This is sexy stuff, right? Yet what should be the heart of this book -- lively and telling anecdotes -- is strangely missing. Take his years at the Voice, for example. Here's a guy who's been at that haven for different drummers and free spirits since 1958 and yet can't manage to offer any dish about its personalities or insight into its defining soul. Sure, he reports that he despised the bland Clay Felker regime and that he's been a semi-pariah there since turning anti-abortion in the early '80s, but he unaccountably shies away from the tell-it-like-it-is details that only an insider can provide. If nothing else, Hentoff has proved himself a heroically consistent champion of free speech and civil liberties. But in writing about these crusades, he's more likely to cite heroes -- from journalist I.F. Stone to deceased Supreme Court Justice William Brennan -- than to narrate fascinating stories. His opposition to abortion, so irritating to his colleagues on the left, is also based on his consistent outrage at threats to life across the board, from euthanasia to nuclear armament. But on this most significant turnabout in his intellectual life, from pro-choice to anti-abortion, his account is disappointingly sketchy. Rambling, superficial, written in prose that's workmanlike at best, "Speaking Freely" nonetheless offers a few boldly defining moments. In one, legendary editor William Shawn, newly deposed from his reign at the New Yorker, sits in a coffee shop, uncharacteristically tieless, unshaven and utterly forlorn. Another is the down-to-earth voice of Justice Brennan, telling Hentoff: "Look, pal, we've always known -- the Framers knew -- that liberty is a fragile thing." Thus necessitating, Hentoff insists, a lifetime of battles in its defense. Sept. 8, 1997 Dan Cryer is a book critic for Newsday. BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html