Bukiet (Strange Fire, etc.) loses his bearings in this strained, wooden collection, which strives so hard to be clever that subtlety flies out the window. The 11 stories are best compared to Woody Allen's fictional sendups of great writers, but lack Allen's intelligent wit and insight. "The Two Franzes," a story about the young Franz Kafka, reads like a discarded skit for an intellectual's Saturday Night Live!, with 12-year-old Franz playing messenger boy to his first mentor, playwright Franz Grillparzer. Kafka's budding talent is ploddingly noted ("he often had ideas that he didn't know what to do with"), as is the genesis of The Metamorphosis ("You little insect," hisses his sister). Many of the entries focus on writers and the theme of literary envy. In "Squeak, Memory," Vladimir Nabokov is stalked by a young fan in 1973, with the Watergate scandal providing a contrived backdrop. In "Paper Hero," an unknown novelist plans a ridiculous publicity stunt at a German book fair that goes predictably awry (he's flogging a novel called Strange Fire). In the ambitious metafictional story "Tongue of the Jews," a WASP-y corporate lawyer becomes a guilt-ridden chronicler of Holocaust stories and is drawn into the plot of a Philip Roth–type novel, but the effort is marred by broad caricatures of wealthy Jewish New Yorkers. Throughout, Bukiet's pacing is uncertain and his tone uneven, literary pastiche alternating with bald colloquialisms ("Randall sometimes knew when he had been dissed"). These juxtapositions at times yield flashes of humor, but Bukiet never exhibits the incisive wit required for effective satire or farce. (Oct.)
