Being Invisible

There is no greater danger to a novelist than the ""bright ideas,'' the seemingly hilarious notion that requires, if it is to come off, steady comic invention, freshness and originality, the sense of something new under the sun. Berger's wimpy protagonist Fred Wagner, a would-be novelist employed to write ad copy for schlocky novelty merchandise, proves unequal to his creator's admittedly intriguing premise. Equipped with the gift of making himself invisible, Fred encounters strange new worldsoffice sex, for example, as practiced by his boss, a woman who ministers to her boss when not more gainfully occupied. Fred himself has as much as he can handle with the blowsy redhead who is his neighbor and the featherbrained colleague who can't write her way out of a subordinate clause. These hijinks fall flat; the sex comedy does not induce laughter; even Berger's (The Feud generally energetic prose is trite. Early on we are assured that ``through being invisible Wagner learned many truths that otherwise would have been invisible.'' Nothing could be further from the truth. (April 15)