Customer Reviews

Time for Robo

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Peter Plagens is an insightful, witty art critic. As a first-time novelist, Plagens is, well, an insightful, witty art critic. Make no mistake, he has always done the art-criticism-thing very well indeed (he even gets to call Robert Hughes "Bob"). In addition to his steady gig at "Newsweek," Plagens has (for many years) also been a painter; now, he's ventured into the territory of writing fiction. One wonders if a debut of the Plagens Neckwear Collection is just over the near horizon.

Voices layer up in "Robo" like IHOP flapjacks. There's a God-narrator-in-the-sky; an author grappling with his second novel; and a pair of peculiar main characters -- Robo, a physical-genius pro-basketball headcase, and Noam Sain, an out-there California minister with a church of his own revelation. (The hook here is that Robo possessed the on-court ability to become split-second invisible while taking the ball to the hoop.) The whole melange is bold mix, but ultimately like an errant three-point shot: you get a whack of backboard but no net. There's a stretch in "Robo" where Plagens sums up the happenings in detail. This is woefully reminiscent of a hopelessly tangled screenplay, where a chin-stroking character steps forward and ponders aloud (for the sake of an audience drifting into REM), "Now let me see if I've got this straight: we've got a, b, c...etc."

At the final buzzer, "Time for Robo" is a no-go. For tortured, impenetrable prose, stick with the Pynchon literary nail bed. For sheer, flop-sweat comic terror crossed with celebrity jock strap sniffing, go with the Fred Exley classic, "A Fan's Notes." For a nifty metaphysical-apocalyptic acid-trip, try R.E. Klein's recent "The History of Our World Beyond the Wave."