Reiner’s novel approach to humor

CARL REINER, creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” is an elder statesman of American comedy, yet he has never restricted himself to one line of work. He has been a film director (“Fatal Instinct,” “The Jerk,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” among others), an actor (most recently, in “Oceans 11” and “Oceans 12”), a producer, a memoirist and author.

Over a long, prolific career, he has won 12 Emmy Awards, has been inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and received the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Now Reiner has written his fourth novel, and though it’s no masterpiece, he still knows how to create appealing characters and deliver a solid punch line.

The title, “NNNNN,” is the name of the novel that Reiner’s hapless, middle-aged protagonist, Nat Noland, is obsessively working on. It’s a title that comes after much deliberation: “ ‘N’ (for novel) had been the working title of his first novel, ‘NN’ his second, and this being his fifth, Nat typed ‘NNNNN’ into the computer. Being borderline superstitious, and aware that his first published novel, “Normal,” started with an ‘N’ and had been a minor success, he decided that all of his titles would contain a word that began with an ‘N.’ ” He decides the title should stick, because it contains a sense of mystery, “like ‘M,’ that classic German film by Fritz Lang!”

Nat is an eccentric Los Angeles author, to say the least, and his habit of talking to himself worries his supportive wife, Glennie. For one thing, Nat is utterly unaware when he is talking to himself (loudly). Worse, his extended conversations with himself often lead to heated arguments. Glennie is pleased when Nat decides to see brilliant Viennese psychoanalyst Frederich Frucht. The absurdity escalates from there.

Some of the funniest material comes in the novel-within-a-novel excerpts of Nat’s work-in-progress, a bizarre and ribald retelling of Cain and Abel. His dialogue is staggeringly bad:

“Cain, we are forbidden to leave our garden. Why hath thou disobeyed Dada?”

“To find what lies outside of Eden. And there I did see her. I thought it was Mama and that she had been rolling in mud.”

Reiner’s real story is Nat’s journey of self-discovery, which begins when he encounters a therapist named Dr. Gertrude Trampleasure, whose office is across the hall from Dr. Frucht. She insists the two have met before and produces a photograph to prove it. That sends Nat, who was adopted by a couple in Carefree, Ariz., to find out who he is, where he came from and whether he might have a brother or two. Along the way, cases of mistaken identity and uncanny coincidences collide, making Nat’s life more complicated than he could have imagined -- and bringing him unexpected fame, culminating in an appearance on “Larry King Live.”

Many readers will guess what is coming in the risible plot line, including various long-lost reunions and a rather silly happy ending as Reiner indulges in an obvious love of slapstick comedy. Although his novel isn’t likely to leave a deep imprint, “NNNNN” is charming and clever enough to satisfy those with a healthy tolerance for the absurd.

*

Carmela Ciuraru, a regular contributor to Book Review, is the editor of six anthologies of poetry, including “Beat Poets” and “Solitude.”