Rude Behavior

In this continuing saga of former sportswriter Jenkins's sardonic alter ego and narrator, Billy Clyde Puckett (Semi-Tough, etc.), the former footballer and gadabout sports junkie slips from redneck obstreperousness to fundamentally racist and misogynist stupidity. The plot of this very shaggy, junior-high-school dirty joke centers on Billy Clyde's attempt to use the money of his father-in-law, Big Ed Bookman, to establish an NFL expansion team in the semiarid Texas wasteland between Amarillo and Lubbock. This improbability is of small concern to the book and occupies less than a tenth of its length. Billy Clyde spends most of the time regaling the reader with the mind-numbing back stories of every character--no matter how minor--who crosses his path. Most all of these have three unlikely names or nicknames, none of which is believable or in good taste. Other diversions include a timeline tracing the history of the NFL, lots of babe-ogling in bars and arguments over the stats of yesteryear. Billy Clyde is too much a part of the absurdity to provide a satiric norm or to separate wisecracks from wisdom. In places, Jenkins gets off an amusing zinger or two, but far too much of this overdone but underachieving farce reminds one of a comedian who grows nastier the fewer laughs he gets. Author tour. (Sept.)