BOOK REVIEW : A Ponderous Spoof of Artist-as-Insider Legend : BOONE <i> by Brooks Hansen and Nick Davis</i> Summit Books $19.95, 362 pages

To paraphrase the original, which I can’t recall: the heavy-duty ostrich is a hummingbird designed by a committee with cost overruns.

“Boone,” a novel, is also designed by a committee. It is a committee of two; and if novels are hardly ever written in tandem--the two-man Ellery Queen and Nordhoff’s and Hall’s “Mutiny on the Bounty” are all I can think of--this new example is altogether unlikely to start a trend.

Brooks Hansen and Nick Davis, according to a note at the end, were friends from birth and graduated from Harvard together three summers ago. They have had the notion of doing a fictional “Edie.” This, for those who have forgotten, was an account of the life and death of Edie Sedgwick, a rich waif who destroyed herself young following the entourage of Andy Warhol. “Edie” was told by patchwork snippets in the words of those who knew her. It was touching because it was true, and because at least some of the witnesses were gifted and observant.

“Boone” uses the same device, only the protagonist and the two dozen witnesses are made up. It is not in the least touching, or gifted or observant . . . or much else except 362 pages long, including a fictional chronology and two pages of thanks to imaginary sources and real friends, editors, agent, and perhaps a dedicatory inside joke or two.

Eton Boone is set up to be not a waif but a blazing comet, of the beautiful-and-damned persuasion. His track is through the arts. He is a cabaret comic, author of the blackest and most corrosive social commentary, a super Lenny Bruce. He is an actor of rare gifts, a daring filmmaker, a talented playwright, and a novelist who excites his editor.

None of these endeavors excites any wider public, outside of a circle of friends, lovers, and intellectual cognoscenti. The cabaret act--Boone does what he calls “exposures” of political and entertainment figures--does sell out for a while, but it has to close owing to an excess of corrosiveness that eats through its container.

The reader, who gets transcripts of the “exposures,” descriptions of the film and the play, and excerpts from the writing, is part of the wider and excluded public. The stuff is terrible. How do you generate excitement around the search for a bad artist?

Perhaps, though, he was a fascinating personage. So the two dozen witnesses suggest. A number of them are lovers, both carnal and heavy-breathing Platonic. The two categories include Hugh, a brilliant and taste-making professor; John, a bookseller; Hilary, a step-brother; Harry, a journalist; Erin, a model, and others. There are friends who are just friends, though also overwrought, as well as mentors, critics, editors and impresarios.

It’s all paean and no proof. The Boone that comes through is oversexed, narcissistic, exploitative and vapid. He had a mother-fixation, and he witnessed his father’s adultery and took an unwitting part in it. This is the key to the damned part; Boone ends up crashing a motorcycle and dying. As for the beautiful, there are no signs of it.

It is possible, of course, for excitement to be generated around an empty figure. It is the doughnut principle. But this requires that the witnesses themselves possess qualities of passion, allure, and a gifted tongue. What makes “Boone” a pretentious and turgid chore is that none of its witnesses have anything to say, and they say it badly. We are at a party with nerds and babblers praising someone who hasn’t showed up. Even Hugh, the professor who enchants his students, is a babbler.

“Oh,” he tells us, “it’s the kind of tragedy that leads one to believe in some sort of divine being, that a man such as he be so targeted for pain.”

At the back of the chum-authors’ minds, “Boone” seems likely to be intended as spoof, a parody of the artist-as-insider legend, and of the artist-insider, legend-celebrity industry. But a ponderous, badly written 362-page spoof? A knobby-legged, non-flying, 362-pound hummingbird?

Next: Elaine Kendall reviews Melissa Lentricchia, “No Guarantees” (William Morrow and Co.).