Book Review : Bit of Sex, Fun From a ‘Serious Writer’

Parachute by Richard Lees (Bantam New Fiction: $7.95; 264 pages)

Out of Sync by Richard Lees (PAJ Publications: $14.55; 156 pages)

There’s a nice story about these two books. Just about the time Richard Lees’ “Parachute” was being sold (with a very nice movie option coming in at $100,000 against a possible $400,000 if the movie got made), the distinguished board at PAJ Publications, looking for very serious literature, picked up “Out of Sync,” an avant-garde effort written by Lees in 1975, an ironic tribute to the American Bicentennial and the sterile culture it celebrated.

Thus, an author who penned, as an average sentence, 13 years ago, “Honda, Harley-Davidson, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Jeep, BMW, Triumph, MG, Austin, Jaguar, Porsche, Volvo, Fiat, Sunbeam . . .” and so on for 13 more lines, and then calls it a page, is in the enviable position of being seen now both as a “serious American writer” and as a nice young man whose latest book is riddled with sex and fun. And he’s going (God willing) to make pots of money from it.

Grumpy Allegory

Bravo! May it ever be so! May all of us who want it get to have our cake and eat it too, and may there be second helpings all around!

“Out of Sync” is a dour, grumpy allegory in which an obscure citizen named Veign (read vain ) is supposedly about to be interviewed by two nasty television personalities, Kneadle (read needle ) and a secretary named Hype. Does the interview occur? Is life in America “real”? Has celebrity obscured our genuine lives? These and other questions are addressed and answered, but “Out of Sync” is nothing anyone would rush to buy.

“Parachute” is concerned with some of these same questions, but in a far more endearing and ingratiating way. Life-imitating-art-imitating-life is still the dynamic here. Not to intimate that “Parachute” is autobiographical at any level, this bright, sweet novel is completely about having your cake and eating it too. “Parachute” takes the dearest American fantasy of all--that having an affair after you’ve been married 10 or 12 years will actually help your marriage (!)--and Lees argues this so tenaciously that (if you didn’t have to live “real” life day after day), you might end up believing it.

Dual Affairs

In fact, having an affair helps the wife in “Parachute” even more than the husband! She’s having an affair too, of course, with his best friend, and it doesn’t hurt their friendship either. In fact they all end up closer and happier than ever! And listen to this! The husband who’s having an affair is a stalled playwright who just a year before felt so bad about being misunderstood that he attempted suicide, and then felt so bad about it that he never got around to telling his wife; and he could barely write a word, but the minute he fell into bed with this gorgeous starlet (a very nice woman!), the words came pouring out! He felt like living again! So (extramarital) sex not only helps your marriage, it’s very, very good for your creative life as well!

Where do you sign up for this non-punitive, sensual-and-silly paradise where there are no recriminations, no broken hearts; where neglected wives begin composing beautiful music and even cuckolded Mafia villains can’t actually bring themselves to hurt anybody?

Sweet and Believable

Who knows what Lees really thinks about all this? (If he really, seriously believes it, God help his friends and his close relations.) But if he’s just taking this dearest American fantasy and composing a little night music, he’s done a beautiful job; creating characters that are often believable and always sweet.

The actual story: J. J. Towne, sad playwright, goes to New York to rewrite an option to work. He immediately falls into bed with a gorgeous young soap opera star named Andee. Back on the West Coast, Lynn, his smart and beautiful wife, immediately falls in bed with J. J.’s friend, Deek, a successful screenwriter. Lynn begins a journal in which to record her thoughts: She loves her husband, but walking on the beach, getting a sunburn, washing the dog and lolling in the hot tub with Deek have, well, what can one say? Where she once felt dead, she’s now alive, and so on.

A Very Hip Story

This is a very hip story. Letters from Andee to J. J., from J. J. to Andee, from J. J. to Deek, show us once again the always-darling dumbness of falling in love. And the subplot here is a wonderful little turn on the machinations of the New York theater, as various minor characters all devoutly write sentiments 180 degrees from what they actually mean. The tone here, in all these notes (for “Parachute,” except for Lynn’s journal, is an epistolary novel, sent to the reader in letters), is perfect.

Only in Lynn’s journal does the tone falter. Lynn writes about sex like a man, that’s all there is to it, but she’s smart, she’s intriguing, so why make a fuss? One other thing. Even though Lynn reveals to her husband that she’s been unfaithful (“Do you hear me? I loved every minute of it. Sex that was again sex. Instead of a love sonnet for the unable to be born.”), J. J. never addresses himself (so to say) to this statement. And since Deek tells J. J. that his mistress was a “fiction,” it’s at least possible that J. J. never really knows about his wife’s infidelity, so he’s spared any extra worry.

If I read correctly then, J. J. has it not just two ways but three. Well, I said this was a fantasy!