Page 2 / News, Trends, Gossip and Stuff To Do : Light Reading : A Fitting Tribute to Kaufman

By IRENE LACHER

Sept. 8, 1999 12 AM PT

Here’s a literary first: Bob Zmuda’s new biography, “Andy Kaufman Revealed!” (Little, Brown), manages without that prosaic feature of other books: the foreword.

But it does have a backword.

What’s more, the backword is backward. That is, you have to hold it up to a mirror to read the letters. They spell out a secret message from actor Jim Carrey--who plays Andy Kaufman in the upcoming biopic “Man in the Moon.” And it doesn’t make sense until you’ve read the book.

Zmuda says the backword was Carrey’s idea. It was inspired by Kaufman’s love for “space” rings that are the Swiss army knives of toy jewelry, combining telescopes, magnifiers and other tools for cracking codes.

“We wanted to do something Kaufman-esque with it,” Zmuda says. “In some of his TV specials, he’d do things with decoder rings and secret messages.”

Zmuda says the backword is in the spirit of a legendary post-show stunt by the late comedian. Kaufman once persuaded an audience to board buses parked outside an L.A. theater even though people didn’t know where they were going.

“It’s the book version of taking an audience out for milk and cookies,” Zmuda says. “It’s messing with the medium no matter what it is.”