As everyone knows, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is publishing his own memoir with HarperCollins, but meanwhile, a racially mixed pair of Washington Post writers are working on their own study of the controversial Thomas, and one likely to be somewhat more critical. It's an expansion of a Post magazine cover story called The Lonely Stand of Clarence Thomas by the paper's national education reporter, Michael Fletcher, and black columnist Kevin Merida, and was sold, reportedly for six figures, to Doubleday editor-in-chief Bill Thomas for North American rights. Agent Andrew Blauner kept foreign, first serial and movie rights. Their book will explore Thomas's upbringing, ideological development and work on the Court, with, according to Merida, "some interesting detours along the way."