BOOK REVIEW : Formulaic Brooklyn Novel That Works

If you have the unsettling sensation of rereading “What Happened Was This,” it’s because it’s a classic American saga: growing up in Brooklyn, working summers at a Catskill mountain resort, then on to Hollywood.

The formula is as strict as any horse opera. Consider it a kind of Eastern Western.

In the purest form, the leading character will be the ambitious, clever child of struggling immigrant parents and will have at least two childhood friends, one of whom will be tougher than the hero and the other more gentle.

The protagonist will fall in love with a neighborhood girl, only to be rejected by her and find consolation elsewhere.

Regardless of gender--women write Brooklyn novels too--the central figure will have a self-deprecating wit and a highly developed sense of guilt. Sex will figure largely in the story, usually more discussed than enjoyed, though the pleasure ratio is steadily improving.

Occasionally, the author will not actually have grown up in The Brooklyn, but in a milieu exactly like it, a Brooklyn of the spirit.

What distinguishes one of these novels from another is the skill with which the writer can operate within the confines of a veritable strait-jacket of setting, character and incident.

The task gets harder every year as more Brooklyn-born writers reach a point in life when they can no longer resist the compulsion to tell their particular stories, often waiting until after they’ve produced an impressive body of work in other areas.

Greenfeld, for example, has written not only screenplays but three extraordinary books centering on the anguish of living with an autistic child. If this deferred novel is a reward to himself, he’s earned it.

Les Rose, the nominal hero, is the son of delicatessen owners. When the book begins, he’s a middle-aged, prosperous director of films he knows to be undistinguished, though his labors have bought him the hallmarks of success--the silver Porsche 911, the house in Pacific Palisades, a socially prominent wife and a pair of handsome kids.

He’s on his way back to the Pritikin Center in Venice, to shed the extra pounds that are the downside of power breakfasts. Having lingered for only a moment with the present Les Rose, we zip back to Brooklyn; this emotional journey is triggered by the voice of a cantor rehearsing for the Jewish holidays in a synagogue on Oceanfront Walk.

The narrative voice belongs to Michel du Champs, a.k.a. Myron Feldstein, from the old neighborhood. After enjoying modest celebrity as a French chanteur, Michel has returned to his roots, which provide not only moral sustenance but also dependable weekly employment.

The unexpected reunion produces a flood of reminiscence. Les recalls his adolescent envy of Michel, who fled Brooklyn for Paris after graduating from high school.

Les himself took the road more traveled, bussing tables in the mountains, registering at Brooklyn College, yearning for a tumble with Vivian Davis, his first romantic love.

Thwarted by Vivian, Les would have settled for her older sister Laura, a card-holding member of the Communist Party, an organization generally believed to advocate free love. When his patience runs out with the Davis girls, Les has his first sexual encounter during his Catskill summer, an additional favor arranged by his older, more worldly friend Chicago Mandelbaum. Chicago is the local bookie, a crude but generous fellow who figures largely in the story.

Though the course of Les’ leisurely progress from innocence to disillusion is predictable, “What Happened Was This” is redeemed by the author’s willingness to expose his protagonist’s weaknesses and exploit his talent for self-deception.

Within the limits of the genre, the characters grow and change. Chicago exhibits the largeness of heart hidden under his sharp jacket and streetwise bluster, and in the end, the hero’s role is usurped by Michel, who has been biding his time all along.

While these switches can’t quite give the Brooklyn novel a whole new lease on life, they show that a determined author can get blood out of a turnip, provided it’s his turnip and he knows just where to apply the pressure.

Next: Carolyn See reviews “North of Hope” by Jon Hassler (Ballantine). WHAT HAPPENED WAS THIS

by Josh Greenfeld Carroll & Graf:

$18.95; 312 pp.