Dann (The Memory Cathedral
; etc.) stumbles with this dubious what-if novel about an alternate reality in which James Dean survives his 1955 car accident. Before the crash, Dann's Jimmy Dean is a drugged-out bisexual party boy, as obsessed with the possibility that the child of former girlfriend Pier Angeli is not his as he is distracted by midnight sexual escapades with Marilyn Monroe. Following his recovery, Dean's career predictably skyrockets while he vacillates between dreams of his Momma and passionate rages over Pier's fickleness. Unfortunately, even though he handily snatches roles from Paul Newman and Marlon Brando, Dean never appears on a set or in front of a camera in Dann's narrative. Instead, via Marilyn, he becomes involved with the Kennedys, and the novel descends into familiar tawdriness (playing, for example, with the theory that Bobby Kennedy had Marilyn killed in order to protect Jack's reputation as well as his own). As the tabloid-style narrative races along, Dann introduces a stupid and blond Elvis Presley, then glosses Hollywood and Washington politics in an inane manner, offering up highly improbable caricatures of now-deceased American icons. Dann shuffles actual events to fit his plot designs and suggests affairs between Bobby and Jackie and Jimmy and a pregnant Ethel Kennedy. Intended to be over-the-top, the novel too often is off-the-wall. Agent, Merrilee Heifetz
. (Aug.)
