Generation Cracks

By R.Z.S.

HOT TO TROT

byJOHN LAHR 241 pages. Knopf. $6.95.

What graying fan of radio's Queen for a Day could have imagined that the concept of short-order celebrity would have gone so far? TV now spits out stars faster than a kid's Fourth of July sparkler. "Everybody wants to get into the act," as Jimmy Durante used to say. But as George Santayana used to say, occasionally there is "a lyric cry in the midst of business."

George Melish, the flashy nova of John Lahr's second novel, is not quite Santayana's last puritan, and his cries are more like yelps. He is, in fact, the butt of Lahr's ambivalent sympathy for the generation currently entering middle age--those who succeeded within the old rules only to find that the next wave of hustlers was trying to change the game entirely.

At 35, Melish is bringing up the rear of the '50s, when early marriage and career were regulations, not options. Like his father, the famous movie producer Sol Melish, George has made a name for himself as the youngest director of programming in the history of ABC television. His resume is like one of those glittery staircases in a Fred Astaire movie. As a Boy Scout, George belonged to the elite Order of the Arrow. At Yale, it was Bones and the Daily News. There was also a year at Oxford, where he met and married Irene Trewin, daughter of Lord and Lady Trewin. A stint at TIME-LIFE did no harm either.

In moments of doubt (which is to say most of the '60s), Melish calms himself by meditating on the contents of his wallet. There is a secret-society pin, a silver matchbook from his wedding and--not to be believed--a condom. Melish is a clear case of arrested development, a closet sentimentalist carrying a cherished artifact of his hot-to-trot days at a time when everyone else seems to be in full gallop.

Everyone includes his once sedate wife Irene, who has thrown George over for a young rock-'n'-roll star. A good part of the novel seems to take place in a tree house, where George secretly watches his wife and her hairy lover do their act in what was once Melish's own bedroom. From his preadolescent perch, George reviews his life like a man flipping the dial on a TV set. It is an apt literary device considering that George is a victim of the same attitudes that he has watered down and packaged for mass prime-time consumption.

Author Lahr has already earned bouquets for Notes on a Cowardly Lion, an autobiography of his father, Comedian Bert Lahr, and scattered applause for his first novel, The Autograph Hound. Hot to Trot is an entertaining economy tour de force for those who prefer to travel fast and light.

qed R.Z.S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.