Lapham Rising
by Roger Rosenblatt
Ecco, 256 pp., $23.95
THE COMIC NOVELIST PETER DE Vries was celebrated for snippets of memorable dialogue. One of my favorites occurred during an exchange between a New Englander and a Southerner:
"How do you know?" "Because Tom said so." "Tom who?" "Tom Magazine."
Given the current trivialization of said publication, that gag would no longer work. But there was a time when it did. I know; I was there, editing the book review section of Tom when wit and information were not unknown in its pages. During that fondly remembered period, the drollest and most instructive of the bygone staffers was a chap named Roger Rosenblatt. He won numerous awards for his work. From time to time I always wondered what had happened to him.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that, after Rosenblatt left the magazine, he became the editor of US News and World Report, a publication I never read; that subsequently he contributed, and still contributes, discerning essays to The Jim Lehrer News Hour, a program I never watch; and that he heads a writing department at Stony Brook University, an institution from which I did not graduate. In his spare time he seems to have published 11 books, starred in an autobiographical one-man off-Broadway show, written another play that featured Ron Silver, and recently composed the off-Broadway hit, Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos, with Bebe Neuwirth as its centerpiece.
Having learned all this, I was bothered by two facts: (a) This protean figure had not developed a plan for world peace. (b) He had not written a novel. Evidently these have been gnawing at him, too. I am not privy to his global plans, but I note that Lapham Rising, Rosenblatt's debut on the fiction list, has just been published.
Its narrator, a blocked, curmudgeonly writer named Harry March, lives alone on an island within an island--Long Island, N.Y., to be precise. His wife has left him. His children have flown the nest. Harry's sole companion is a West Highland white terrier named Hector, whom he addresses as Mr. Tail.
Hector is an unusual canine. He not only talks back to Harry, he's also a born-again evangelical as well as a believer in free-market capitalism. Hence he cheers on Lapham, builder of an ostentatious home rising just across the way. Harry hates Lapham's parvenu plans. Then again, Harry hates everything. And everybody.
"Who but a misanthrope would live like this?" Mr. Tail demands. Stung, his master responds, "What's wrong with the way I live?"
"What's wrong? Where to begin? How many people watch Murder She Wrote reruns all day long . . . ? And your appearance! Everything you wear is ten years old." "Not the bandage on my ear. And what about your appearance?" "I'm perfect," he says. "I take care of myself." He curls up and licks his genitals, thinking that proves the case.
Lapham Rising brims with word play: March's place is called Noman, so that when people ask where he lives he can reply, "Noman is an island." The Hispanic workers across the way refer to him as Señor Moment. Hector wonders why one can't serve both God and mammal.
But a mordant undercurrent runs beneath the chatter. No one has a better ear for the Hamptons' hautes clichés than Rosenblatt. As a beautiful neighbor dives into Long Island Sound, for example, Harry remarks that a hush seems to fall over the posh suburbs:
No one asks where the potato farms have gone. Likewise the duck farms. No Filipino housekeeper is yelled at for failing to position the fruit forks correctly. No year-round resident is pushed aside at a farmers' market. No one asks anyone else to a small dinner just for close friends, or wishes there were more time to spend reading quietly on the beach away from all the big parties. No one gives kudos. Or draws raves. No one embarks on an exciting new phase of his life, or comments that life is a journey. No one plans a benefit or dinner dance for a fatal disease. No one lowers his voice to say 'Jew.'
Harry recollects the incident that finally broke his marriage in two. The couple attended a grand dinner party, along with people with such De Vriesian (or Dickensian, or for that matter Joe Hellerian) names as Bobo de Pleasure ("the conservative columnist with a liberal flair, whose own popular Let's Get Ahead by Agreeing with All Sides had just been reissued"); Parkyer Carsir ("the gossip publisher"); and Eely Moray, a television host about to forsake broadcasting in order "to found his own church based on the teachings of Joseph Campbell."
At the gathering, a chorus sounded from each of the tables. It consisted of the word great. "Everything spoken of was great. People who looked great were great and were doing great things. They were also about to embark on new projects which were themselves great." After a choir of greatness, the hostess asked her guests, one by one, to stand up and tell the others what great things he or she was up to. Ultimately Harry was called upon to inform the crowd of his latest undertaking: "I gulped down my fourth Margaux and decided that I would be more visible and more effective if I stood on the table. . . . 'This evening,' I said, 'this very evening. I am going home to give myself an enema. And it will be great.'" Not long afterward, the long-suffering Mrs. March headed for Splitsville. "Something about a last straw."
Lapham Rising contains a number of such confrontations, along with quotes from classic authors lamenting their own times--Hesiod is one of Rosenblatt's favorites ("Fairness and moderation are no longer esteemed"). But March overrides them all, and with good reason: Our own epoch is uniquely coarse and triumphantly vulgar, and never more visibly so than on the manicured playing fields of the Hamptons.
Manifestly, the author has been paying close attention not only to ancient Greek poets but also to modern filmmakers. The director/scenarist Billy Wilder once advised a colleague, "If you are going to tell people the truth, be funny or they will kill you." Rosenblatt has taken this sound advice to heart. He will not be shot on sight--not until the Island's A-list folks take a second look at Lapham Rising. Then he had better watch where he walks; the tears running down their cheeks will not be from merriment alone.
Stefan Kanfer is the author of Groucho and Ball of Fire. His next book, Stardust Lost, a history of the Yiddish theater, will be published this year.