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.