THE BOYS IN THE MAIL ROOM

by Iris Rainer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 22, 1979

Before slipping (all too quickly) into a Valley of the Dolls showbiz sex-and-soaper, this tale of four young ambitious Hollywood types has moments of genuine sentimental grab and even charm. Rainer is best when giving us the teenage years (1950s-'60s) of each of the boys, all obviously or apparently Jewish: David Kane, whose mother's death from a botched self-abortion (she was mistress of a sleek Hollywood banker) leaves him stony and cold; Mickey Ashman, a funnyman kid actor in Chicago TV commercials who winds up stranded in L.A. when a possible TV series job washes out; Barry Golden of Brooklyn, cast out by Jewish Mother for being a homosexual; and Start Rose, who becomes a TV addict while beating childhood polio (thanks to his dentist dad). All four guys, of course, end up working together in the mail room of Hemisphere Studios, and there's some nice camaraderie and hi-jinkery--like their creation, via forged letters, of a mythical Russian film director-as long as they're all yearning to get out of the mail room, ogling Frank S. and Mia F. in the commissary. But once they do get out, the book pretty much falls apart, the characters losing distinctiveness and likability as three of them (all but actor Mickey) go hot and heavy into predictable, uninvolving wheeling-and-dealing. Driven, ruthless David becomes an agent, then producer while snakily courting the studio head's goddaughter and blackmailing his dead mother's old lover. Barry becomes lover-manager of a soft-rock star whose big hit is ""The Rain is Like My Tears."" Stan becomes a rock promoter whose partner's groupie-and-drug habits get them both in big trouble. And, instead of suspense or character development to hold all the diffuse business stuff together, Rainer just supplies lots of rather self-consciously hardcore sex (oral sex with honey, etc.) and desperate plot turns: Barry's lover is killed in a plane, Barry needs brain surgery, Barry tries heterosexuality with superstarlet Beau (""I want to fuck your brains out""), Stan falls for a Bad Girl, and--to put an ending on a shapeless novel--Mickey is arbitrarily murdered just after finally making it in TV. For some readers, the sleaze and the show-biz atmosphere (which is knowing but never as focused or convincing as that in Goldman's Tinsel) will be enough; most, however, will regret that Rainer chose to churn out commercial formula instead of writing the warmer, realer book promised by those opening chapters.

Pub Date: Jan. 22, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION