A LOVELY MONSTER: The Adventures of Claude Rains and Dr. Tellenbeck

This is a pathetically undernourished attempt to catch the whimsy and archness of Brautigan or Barthelme, without a whit of substance to justify the effort. Only last year Brautigan wrote The Hawkline Monster, but this author doesn't hesitate a minute in borrowing the mad-scientist premise and beating it for all it's worth. In a word, it's Frankenstein, California-style: homogenized, creamed and on toast, with many jokes dependent on the fact that the monster's penis derives from a stallion named Luigi. An unremitting stream of short, unadorned declarative sentences is what passes for style. De Marinis lacks wit, vocabulary, metaphoric imagination, descriptive power. Also originality. Not to mention a story. What a waste. What a bore. Trash it.