BOOK REVIEW : Coming of Age in ‘Dead’ ‘70s : KICKING TOMORROW, <i> by Daniel Richler,</i> Random House, $21, 311 pages.

Someone--maybe the author--must have made a short-run PR decision to “advertise” Daniel Richler as the son of iconoclastic, Canadian-Jewish Mordecai Richler.

So I’m sure that at least one artistic motive of “Kicking Tomorrow” has already been achieved.

Somewhere in Canada, Richler pere has an Excedrin headache.

(In the first few pages of this first novel, Robbie Bookbinder, rebellious 17-year-old son, confronts his dead-drunk father: “Dad, what the . . . --pardon me--do you do ? exactly.” But Dad can only groan “his patented Groan of Ages, turning over, in Robbie’s slit-eyed view, like some spiced beast on a spit.” So much for Dad!)

*

This is a patently autobiographical novel. Fictional Robbie broods constantly about his basement rock band, Hell’s Yells. Real Daniel Richler includes in his bio that he was “lead singer of the infamous Alpha Jerks.” Fictional Robbie has no end of French Canadian biker friends and enemies. Real Daniel Richler writes that he is “currently a member of the New Hegelians Motorcycle Club.”

So we know what the blood lines of this book are.

Speaking of “blood” lines, before one gets to the plot, this novel gets an “SBL” for Strong Body Language, in the sense that the physical body is emphasized here: Words like meat, mucous and blood, nose bleeds, saliva (over and over), excrement, vomit/vomity/upchucking, halitosis, B.O., clotted blood, spittle, snot (over and over), grease and greasy (over and over and over) dominate the narrative.

In “Kicking Tomorrow,” the physical body prevails, and the physical body isn’t feeling very well.

Richler’s novel is a classic coming-of-age narrative. The place is Montreal, where the French and the English (literally) aren’t speaking to each other. At home, Robbie’s father is passed out drunk in front of the TV. His younger brother and sister seem to live in a parallel universe, and Robbie’s mom is a constant embarrassment.

She’s a sunny-tempered idealist who runs a TV talk show called “Hello World,” in which she futilely tries to get her audience to pay attention to the environment which, due to ruthless Canadian capitalists, is beginning to look a little “vomity” itself.

Robbie, in the midst of a terrible case of teen alienation, hates the whole damn lot of them. He hates their house, their summer cottage, their complacency, their old Jewish grandmother. He hates the religious laxity that lets them have a Seder in September, and he hates the fact that every time they “ask the four questions,” he always has to be the “wicked child.”

Above all, Robbie hates the times he lives in, the Dreaded ‘70s, when he longs for the idealism of the ‘60s. He’s living, he believes, in the midst of a Great Hangover.

Certainly, he’s got one. Young Robbie would be a stereotype from teen hell, were not the stereotype so tragic and vivid. He’s got his foul basement band. His biker “friends,” his crawling loneliness, his pesky virginity and his hatred of everything, everything.

*

He drinks any liquid he can find, and does every drug he can turn up, with the exception of heroin, where he draws the line. He is soon kicked out of the house to find a job, but he can’t find a job. Hell’s Yells is barely reality.

Robbie’s typical afternoon is to buy a six-pack of beer and some “ ‘shrooms,” go into a mall movie, throw up, pass out and exit, hours later, shivering and alone.

He’s in love with a girl who is poor and a drug dealer and mean and smart. He’s loved by a kind stripper who takes care of him but is brutally raped in the streets.

And he’s dogged by a heartless doppelganger--nihilist musician Colin Sick (Sid Vicious, maybe?), who has everything Robbie (thinks he) wants.

This is a sorrowful novel. But it contains valuable information on Canada’s woes and the bleakness of the Dead ‘70s.

As for the Message to Mordecai, it’s none of our business.