cover image Fast Sofa

Fast Sofa

Bruce Craven. Quill Books, $22 (331pp) ISBN 978-0-688-11867-9

First novelist Craven's synthesis of On the Road , David Copperfield , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , The Sun Also Rises and TV's Melrose Place quite simply doesn't work. Behind the promotional tie-ins (accompanying soundtrack, parental advisory sticker, hyped image of bad-boy-novelist/administrator-at-Columbia-University) lays a banal interpretation of life on the edge in the contemporary U.S. Rick, the protagonist, is a reckless, car-loving character for whom the '60s, '70s and '80s do not matter. He stumbles upon the porn star of his dreams and cavorts around the country with her and various other cartoonish characters, drinking too much, experimenting with drugs and having casual, unprotected sex. Rick's animal magnetism and visceral sexuality cause his true love, Tamara, to put up with his sexist and racist antics in spite of her better, feminist instincts. Even the character who represents wisdom, an eccentric bird lover named Jules, has scant sagacity to offer as Craven uses him to comment on little more than when television became a truly vapid medium. If the message here is one of nihilism and male anomie, the question arises: Why all the overblown excitement and hype? Author tour. (Feb.)