DAVID MEYER IS A MOTHER

On the credit and credits side, Gail Parent is more capable of a funny line than a whole book or sitcom version thereof--she's the author of Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living In New York and scripts for Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore. This one's about male submission to women's liberation as one David Meyer from Long Island, reared as a superior boychik with paternal send-offs on schtupping, becomes the victim of the sexual revolution at 32, replaced by ""plastic and batteries."" His personhood and puissance destroyed, he goes to the LoveAble Waterbed Demonstration outlet in L.A. where he falls for the girl who renews him only to learn her name, Linda Minsk, months later when she authors a Playboy article. After many down-putting experiences (he gets cystitis as a substitute for ""the curse""), he moves in with Linda to become their homemaker and finally decides he just must have a baby. But Linda decides to abort hers/theirs (she's not anxious to have a child in this country of wars, pollution and Bob Hope specials) until he succeeds in buying her off. The concept may be something of a late bloomer, if not a stillbirth by the time Gail Parent works it to death. Perhaps that's the price everyone has to pay while David keeps reminding you over and over of Gloria, Gloria, Gloria, in excelsis.