Sunday, July 16, 2023
FOOLSCAP by Michael Malone
Theo Ryan is a drama professor at a well-respected
university in North Carolina. He has
written several plays but knows that only “Foolscap” has any merit. His friend and renowned playwright Ford
Rexford reads the play and helps Theo iron out a few kinks. From here, things take off in some weird
directions. I don’t mind reading a
madcap adventure now and then, but this book gets bogged down in university
politics and petty bickering that I just found to be annoying and not pertinent
to the plot. Theo has all the necessary
qualities for being a good leading man, and Ford is the stereotypical
charismatic literary genius with a drinking problem and a short attention span
when it comes to women. The female
characters are merely bit players, but my beef is more with the plot than the
characters. It’s almost like a comic
version of a Dan Brown novel with Sir Walter Raleigh as the historical figure
around whom much of the plot revolves.
King James I, who ordered the beheading of Sir Walter, is the only
dastardly villain here, but even Theo is not immune to the occasional ethical
lapse. Ford is certainly not a good role
model, but he dominates the narrative with his unpredictable antics, and he’s
not part of the whining and gossipy university faculty. He is sort of a modern-day incarnation of Sir
Walter Raleigh, although Sir Walter’s vice seems to have been tobacco, not
booze.
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