Sellout

Putnam's semi-autobiographical Bancroft tetralogy concludes with this offbeat chronicle of recovering alcoholic Gordon Bancroft's foray into bar ownership, female wrestling and opera in San Francisco during the 1970s. Bancroft begins this portion of his life story on a jarring note, with his father's death and his inheritance of some money that he eventually uses to buy a pub called The Fife and Drum. His experiences running the bar and trying to open it up to meals and music seem to promise a lively combination of Charles Bukowski and Cheers, but the story never achieves more than a bland uniformity, despite some potentially entertaining material (the bar is briefly used as a female wrestling venue). Putnam brings a lot of energy to Bancroft's trials and tribulations, but, at the end, the character is little changed, and the novel feels like a sequel to the real story, the one behind Bancroft's growth from barfly to bar owner, which occurs before the book commences. At least earlier in the series, in Good Men and Bottoms Up, Putnam had the excesses of youth and alcohol to fuel his narratives; here, the only passion seems to be a love of opera, and the result is that, the story now feels powered less by a gas engine than by a couple of batteries. (Aug.)