(FORTUNE Magazine) – First of all, we doubt that House Speaker Jim Wright spent more than 25 minutes working on Reflections of a Public Man (Madison Publishing Co., $5.95), an oeuvre of 117 pages expected to soon become famous. Second, we doubt that stout neoconservative John Silber, president of Boston University, actually read this tome. Had Silber curled up even briefly with Reflections, or for that matter examined it upside down while standing stiffly on his head, he could not possibly have blurbed on the back cover that ''all Americans should read this book.'' Friends, it is not meant to be read by humans, least of all neocons. Less fascinating than the label on your average can of tomato paste, its only discernible function is to make Jim Wright quite a bit richer than your average real writer. Galling, eh? The book has 75 chapters. That sounds like a lot of chapters, but some consist of only a couple of sentences and many are anecdotes mysteriously bereft of a point. Included are the author's boilerplate eulogy at a fellow congressman's funeral service, a poem commenting favorably on a Mexican sunset, and several affirmative references to truth and justice. An essay on the Constitution that goes on for all of three paragraphs makes the point that the American system depends on a certain amount of compromise. But why go around badmouthing a four-year-old nonbook by a nonwriter? Is it because the nonwriter in question runs the House like a tinhorn dictator? Because he has a fatal affinity for shady S&L operators in Texas? Because he casts himself as a separate Department of State for purposes of dealing with Central America? Or because he signed the infamous ''Dear Commandante'' letter to Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega after the letter was prepared by the House's radical Democrats (whose support he needed to become Speaker)? Actually, none of the above would justify a review of Reflections. What is really fascinating about the book is another matter -- a matter of joint concern to Republicans and writers. What both these groups wish to know is how come Jim Wright gets a 55% royalty on this production. A standard book contract gives a real writer a royalty of 10% to 15%. How come Jim gets such a sweet deal? The answer is wild. It seems that Wright's publisher is an old buddy named Carlos Moore. Carlos is not actually a publisher -- at least, he had never previously published a book -- but he is a big Jim Wright backer in Fort Worth and proprietor of a printing company that has done a certain amount of work for Wright campaigns over the years. Believing firmly in guilt by association, we might as well add that Moore also happens to have a prison record. (While he was working for a Teamster political fund, some of the money stuck to his fingers.) Certain House Republicans are now all set to make an issue of the book. We do not know exactly what line they will take, but the line that instantly occurs to your kindly correspondent is that the world of letters has given us a new way to pay off politicians. By pretending to be in the writing game, Jim Wright has found a way for his backers to pay him legally. (At the end of 1986, he had made around $55,000 on the book.) All they have to do is keep buying copies, which, by all accounts, they do quite regularly. And it really is legal. The Washington Post reported a while back that when Congress passed its latest ethics codes restricting members' outside income, one member proposed that the restrictions not apply to royalties. Guess which member.