There are few contemporary American works of fiction as humorously erudite or eccentrically ambitious as Eric Kraft’s cycle of novels, “The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy.” In these convoluted tall tales, Kraft evokes Peter’s experience of growing up innocent, curious and horny in Babbington, Long Island, “Clam Capital of America.” Each installment is tricked out with Glen Baxter-like illustrations, a cornucopia of allusions to Western literature and a host of narrative acrobatics, including prefaces explaining what really happened to Peter and why the details had to be changed to make the story truer.
Occasionally, however, the risks Kraft takes fall flat. That’s the case, alas, with “Passionate Spectator” (St. Martin’s, 256 pages, $23.95), a trick-box of a novel that, instead of having a strong narrative backbone festooned with digressions, is more than 60 percent digression, with a tenuous connecting thread that reveals itself only in the last 10 pages, too late to grab the reader’s interest.
That’s a shame, because the novel’s premise is terrific. An aging, cash-poor Peter, living in Manhattan with his devoted wife, Albertine, is trying to cook up a scheme to bring in some income. What he hits on is Memoirs While You Wait, a service to help ordinary souls get their lives down on paper in a readable manner.
So far, so good. One can imagine a situation where the sensibilities and memories of memoir-subjects and ghostwriter get tangled and confused, creating comic angst and cosmic mind-exchange.
But Kraft doesn’t take the book in that direction. Instead, the narrating voices crowding out Peter’s belong to Matthew Barber, the restaurant-critic protagonist from Kraft’s 1990 novel, “Reservations Recommended,” and B.W. Beath, the pseudonym Matthew uses while on the job. When Matthew is hospitalized with heart trouble, “Passionate Spectator” loses sight of Peter and his memoir scheme for more than 140 pages.
Money and mortality are on Kraft’s mind here — rich subjects for any novelist. But his three-voiced approach feels cluttered, and the viability of Matthew and B.W. as narrators depends too much on the readers’ familiarity with “Reservations Recommended.” “Passionate Spectator” also comes weighed down with a lot of carping about the dismal state of American culture and humanity in general in the 21st Century — all true enough but phrased without much sting or distinction. Maybe the gentle absurdities of Babbington, Long Island, are a pipe dream at this point. Certainly it’s clear that Kraft wants to move on from Peter’s boyhood and adolescence. Still, I can’t be the only Kraft fan hankering after another visit to the charms of the “Clam Capital of America.”