Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...distinctly sleazy case in point is The Rich Man's Table (Knopf; 273 pages; $23), an expertly written novel by Scott Spencer, author of Endless Love, that rips off the life of Bob Dylan. Most readers will recall that Dylan was a scraggly haired harmonica player with an edgy voice and an edgy mind, a Jewish kid from Minnesota who changed his name from, let's see, Zimmerman? And later converted to Christianity for a few years. The character who dominates Spencer's novel was born Stuart Kramer, transformed himself as "Luke Fairchild," and came from "the Midwest," not specifically...
...what, except that the author has somewhat lazily not bothered to invent his own central figure? But the burden of the novel is that Luke Fairchild is a monster of charm and talent, adulated for the purity of his counterculture protest. And, as Spencer tells it, he abandons his pregnant girlfriend Esther Rothschild when he hits the big time, and then meanly refuses to acknowledge the resulting child Billy as his own, or to peel off any loot for child support. The story is told by Billy, who, as a teenager and then as an adult, skulks about the edges...
...self-pitying, rather irritating Billy really exist? Don't know, don't care, though if Esther and Billy are pure invention, what is the point of the Dylan caricature? These are questions that readers will ask, and try to answer. But they get in the way of the novel, which, of course, has done a thorough job of getting...
...star has people. He does not uncap a beer or roll his own joint or bother to seduce. His followers are driven by desperate hunger. In the novel's best scene, one of its last, Esther has been terribly hurt in a car crash. Luke appears and orders an ambulance, and they rush into Manhattan toward a hospital. But someone, probably the ambulance driver, has phoned a radio station. As the news gets out, cars fall in behind the ambulance, then ahead. Progress slows, then stops. Luke steps out, climbs on the ambulance, shouts for a clear path. "One song...
...daughters in Cayro, Ga., to run off to Los Angeles with rock star Randall Pritchard and his pretty-good band, Mud Dog. Ten years later, her homing instinct kicks in after Randall is killed in the spectacular motorcycle wreck that hooks the reader on the first page of the novel...