It has been an auspicious
year for Bob Dylan. He survived a heart
infection, won three Grammys (his son Jakob
won two) and played for the pope. Too bad The
Rich Man's Table , Scott Spencer's quasi-bio
masquerading as a novel about Dylan, isn't nearly
as successful. Actually, the latest offering from
the author of Endless Love and Men in Black
is a memoir-inside-a novel, the supposed true-life
story of one Billy Rothschild, a substitute teacher
in his late 20s who may or may not be the
illegitimate (and unacknowledged) son of Luke
Fairchild, aka Stewart Kramer, "a shapeless
Jewish kid from the Midwest" who became the
bard of his generation.
Like Dylan, Luke (who accumulates acolytes
known as "Lukologists," a clear reference to the
"garbologists" who used to rifle through Dylan's
trash for clues to his songs and his life) plays in
the Greenwich Village folk clubs in the '60s, gets
famous, gets girls, gets religion, etc. He also, says
Billy's beauteous mother, Esther, fathered Billy.
Desperate to find out all he can about Luke --
and to get the creep to acknowledge him -- Billy
goes around interviewing everyone connected to
him.
In these early sections, Spencer portrays
Luke's/Bob's world with breathtaking accuracy:
the Sullivan Street scene in the hippie-folk days,
the life of the Little Red School House (known as
the Red Diaper Baby school for its quantities of
hippie/commie kids), the lyrics that, when recited,
walk the line between poetry and pomposity. And
Spencer, we all know by now, can write: A girl in
the neighborhood has "a face as blunt and
expressionless as a knee"; Billy responds to a
stepfather-wannabe with the "sour, slightly
contemptuous thoughts ... common in fatherless
boys who pine for a man's love." At evoking an
era and its sensibility, at pinning down spinning
emotions, Spencer has no equal.
Still, the novel doesn't work, largely because no
one in it, besides Luke, is very compelling. Cut
from cardboard, the supporting cast here -- with
the notable exception of Billy's maternal
grandfather, a feisty Communist curmudgeon
who once attacked the great Luke with his cane
-- seems to exist only to impart information to
Billy. Esther, Little Joe (a onetime friend of
Luke's), even Sergei Kapanov, the Russian body
builder Luke publicly defends against a murder
charge (Spencer's version of Hurricane Carter,
the fighter about whom Dylan wrote a famous
song), are mere props. And Spencer's plot --
about a car accident in which Esther is seriously
injured -- seems contrived as yet another
opportunity for Billy to confront Luke.
Ultimately, though, the biggest problem is Billy
himself, a one-dimensional character with only
one main activity: badgering Luke into admitting
paternity. An obsessive who's more than willing
to use Luke's bad behavior as an excuse for
everything unpleasant or unfinished that ever
happens to him, Billy is the original Johnny
One-Note, with a voice as whiny and abrasive as
any early Bob Dylan song. If only he -- and his
story -- were as memorable. -- Salon
Spencer (Endless Love; Men in Black ) has imagined a quintessential 1960s folk-rock superstar, Luke Fairchild, who seems to be a cross between Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen but has a following greater than either, and scrutinizes him both as cultural phenomenon and person. He is seen through the eyes of his seldom-acknowledged son, Billy Rothschild, the offspring of a liaison with beautiful left-wing hippie Esther when both seemed the essence of their breakaway generation in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. Now it is 30 years later: Billy is a schoolteacher still tormented by the fame and elusiveness of his father; his mother lives in the country among old friends and quietly drinks her life away. Spencer writes perceptively of the burdens of colossal success; his picture of Luke, spoiled and selfish yet with a core of sweet uncertainty that makes him a magnet to millions, is subtle and unnerving. Most impressively, his ear for rock lyrics (he reproduces many of Luke's songs as he goes along) is unerring. Billy is less convincing, and the pretense that he is doing a book on his father is a rather awkward device as an excuse for his narrative. But the joyfully romantic excesses, as well as the pain and waste, of those far-off times are beautifully evoked and sure to bring a nostalgic tear to the eye of any aging hippie. (Apr.)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
The narrator of a coming-of-age novel is typically an awkward adolescent caught on the cusp of adulthood, but Spencer provides a twist. Billy Rothschild, the illegitimate offspring of a rock'n'roll star and an exceptionally beautiful woman, is a decade removed from his teenaged years, but he has still not made the emotional transition to maturity. His coming of age has been held obsessively in limbo by an unresolved need to connect with his famous father. Billy lives his life around the edges of his father's career, interviewing old friends and acquaintances and seeking release in chronicling his search for recognition. A tragic accident forces Billy's long-awaited reunion and release. Fans of Spencer's Men in Black (LJ 4/15/95) will recognize the self-absorbed voices and critical self-reflections that mark his characters. For larger public libraries.Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll., NC
Quest narratives haven't been the fashion in American fiction for quite some time, but Scott Spencer's new novel, The Rich Man's Table , could give the genre a surge of new life....Spencer knows what it takes to captivate an audience. -- New York Times Book Review
What stays with you is the compelling portrait of a figure whose history, his son says, 'is the history of the second half of 20th-century America'. -- New York Times
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
A tale of over-the-top intensity that enthralls to the end. -- People Magazine
Luke Fairchild is startlingly Dylanesque... Spencer's bold prose captures the grotesque world in which rock and roll deities reside. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
When Luke appears, the book sings. -- Vogue
The story strikes universal notes about longing and self-knowledge... the desire to connect with and be accepted by a parent is an urge so primal... and Spencer handles it with wit and grace. -- San Francisco Chronicle
"All I wanted was a father," Billy Rothschild explains, looking back at his fatherless childhood. At the heart of Spencer's (Men in Black , 1995, etc.) dense, rueful, startling new novel is a young man's long search to somehow make contact with his long absent parent. Billy's mother Esther reluctantly tells him, when he's nine years old, that his absent father is in fact Luke Fairchild, the dominant figure on the folk-rock scene in the 1960s and '70s and a man now obscured by many layers of legends. But knowing who his father is, Billy gradually discovers, isn't enough. He needs to know who this man—who seems, at the same time, both an entirely public and deeply private figure—really is and why he seems to have had so little interest in his son. The book is presented as the grown-up Billy's record of this long pursuit, and it covers, with great dexterity, a lot of territory. It shares, with many of Spencer's other novels (Secret Anniversaries , 1990, etc.) a protagonist undertaking an anguished search for the truth, and a fascination with the upheavals and utopian possibilities of the '60s. Billy begins to research his father's life, to track down anyone who has known him and can tell him something authentic about the man. He interviews musicians, former lovers, even a priest who had counseled him. Out of this welter of conflicting information, Billy begins to assemble a portrait of a sad, ambitious, deeply conflicted man. And eventually, of course, Billy's search leads him to an encounter with his father, and to a deeply ironic reunion between his parents. The portrait of Luke remains somewhat hazy, but the passion of Billy's search, and the yearning that drivesit, as well as the pain of lost possibilities he discovers in Luke and Esther's lives, are all rendered with vigor and clarity. A mournful, moving work.
