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Title: potential promise, ultimate disappointment
Review: When the Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley dissolved into giggling enthusiasm, I should have known that Anderson's first novel was no equal to My Search for Warren G. Harding by John Plunket or Confederacy of Dunces by Robert Kennedy Toole. But I liked the cover blurbs, and the real Boonville casts a bizarre shadow, even for Northern California. Some parts of the story did keep their promise. A baseball game with in-fielders who could have wandered into the plot from a Bruce Willis movie. A Florida live-in girlfriend who takes up with a neighbor practically before our antihero can find a California pay phone. But most parts are forced. Our hero has ingested too much. The satirical targets don't matter, and the plot past the midpoint becomes a swim in molasses even after Anderson introduces a free sex commune. My advice: Re-read Plunket.
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