Jerry
Flack reviews Steve Kluger's Almost Like Being in Love
The Independent Gay Writer is proud to present a major effort by reviewer Jerry Flack for a most engaging "review." It is rather long, but it is well worth the read. Like Kluger, Jerry has spiced up his review with referents outside and inside the novel to bring to it a more complete appreciation of the material. Well...see for yourself.
Jerry Flack can be contacted here.
 Almost Like Being in Loveby Steve Kluger ISBN: 0060595833 Perennial/ HarperCollins, 2004 Paper, 368 pages, $13.95 No one likes a wise guy unless, of course, the guy in mind is writer Steve Kluger; then all bets are off. Kluger hit at least a triple with his hilarious first epistolary novel about FDR, professional baseball, New York Giants player Charlie Banks, in particular, and a slightly deranged but loveable kid named Joey Margolis who needed a hero, had a wicked way with a pen and far too much time on his hands in the comedic novel Last Days of Summer (Avon, 1998). Now, with Almost Like Being in Love, Kluger has hit a grand slam home run in the world of gay comic fiction. Reading Almost Like Being in Love is well, almost like being in love. Once you have read it, you want to shout it to the world. “Ain’t Love Grand!” Kluger has greatly upped the stakes in his riotously funny love story that is really a three-act farce with one twenty-year intermission. ACT I: “Brigadoon” -- Craig and Travis Fall in Love In the vanishing months of their senior year two young gay guys at the Beckley School, Tarrytown, NY speak for the first time at a moment in their lives that just happens to coincide with the nuclear explosion of their gay hormones. To add just a tad more combustibility to the chemistry, Kluger’s gay lovers could not possibly be more different. Craig McKenna is the Golden Boy of Beckley School (Room 311). Although short of stature he is a ferocious competitor and a gifted athlete on the grid iron (leading the Black-and-Grey to a 10-0 senior season) and a batting sensation at home plate with a 11-game hitting streak. Craig was not only the only sophomore to ever win the Beckley School citizenship award, he’ll soon to be presented with the annual Beckley Victory Cup, the school’s first unanimous choice as Best Athlete. In his four years at Beckley, Craig has never even spoken to Travis Puckett, the class brain, unsurpassed nerd, and resident “queer” according to his homophobic classmates. Although mercilessly picked on during his first two years at Beckley, Travis has managed to hide out in the school library and make frequent secret excursions to the Broadway mezzanines for Ethel Merman musicals until he becomes blissfully “invisible” to his fellow students. Travis’ life goal is to own every Broadway original soundtrack ever recorded and he is not above an all-night hitch-hiking trip of three hundred miles to Scranton, PA to secure a rare copy of Anthony Perkins singing the score of Frank Loesser’s “Greenwillow,” much to the horror of the otherwise heroic Craig who fails to understand such madness. The only person pre-Craig who really knows Travis is Gordo, his roommate. Travis has spent four years with the school’s biggest slob, Gordon Duboise. It took eight months of their freshman year for the super straight Gordo to warm up to Travis, but once he did, he began to see the virtues Travis possesses – the chromosomes of genius and a huge heart. Nevertheless, the Travis-Gordo rapprochement has never accommodated their Oscar and Felix-like existence (see the DVD of Neil Simon’s 1968 “The Odd Couple” with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau if you are really THAT young) with a clear line of demarcation that runs the length of their shared room. Gordo is such a slob that he can close his eyes and by whiff of scent alone identify from his mountains of dirty laundry a singular item. “What stinks?” inquires Travis and Gordo quickly replies, “Sweatshirt…Georgia Tech.” (p. 14) And, of course, he is perfectly correct. Although Craig is the star athlete, it is Travis who fakes right and makes an unexpected “save” (thanks to Peabody’s Contemporary Criticism) on the subject of romance and Wuthering Heights in order to rescue Craig in Mr. Naylor’s senior English class that finally brings the guys together. Toss in a backstage second “save” when Travis topples off a ladder into Craig’s muscular arms and instantly falls in love with the dimple in his chin. The feeling quickly becomes mutual as the two work backstage for the school-year-ending joint musical with Beckley’s boys’ and Mary Immaculate’s girls’ version of the Lerner & Loewe’s classic “Brigadoon” (Hence the novel’s title, the love song, “Almost Like Being in Love” that Gene Kelly sang to Cyd Charisse in the 1954 MGM-Vincent Minnelli movie musical classic.) From that moment on through their first kiss and a magical summer spending their days together stocking the album bins together at Colony Records and every other waking moment locked in each other’s arms in their shared West 92nd Street flat in New York City, Craig and Travis discover all the incredible magic of first love. Life and love have never been sweeter. Then, of course, there was “Smerko” (AKA actor Bobby Di Cicco) from the real 1978 movie “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” a wild comedy about a bunch of New Jersey teens who head for New York City to see the Beatles make their first-ever USA appearance on TV’s “Ed Sullivan” show in 1964. The movie was one of the few box office flops for director Robert Zemeckis (“Back to the Future” and “Forest Gump”) and producer Stephen Spielberg, but back in 1978 it was the movie touchstone for Craig and Travis’ all-to-brief love affair. The Jimmy Dean-type tough guy in the movie is Tony Smerko and both Travis and Craig wanted to nail down “Smerko” as their nickname in their first brush with romance. Craig wins the coin toss, but pretends to lose because he realizes Travis needs to be “Smerko” more than he does. (Thanks to DVD, and very possibly Steve Kluger’s popular Almost Like Being in Love, the film was finally released for home viewing late in 2004.) But even “Smerko” could not stop time and all too quickly the magic summer of 1978 comes to an end and prior college commitments bring the love story to a close almost before it has really begun. Tearfully, the lovers bid adieu and Craig, the Golden Boy of Beckley and the only member of his class to be accepted at Harvard, heads for Cambridge while Travis, wanting to get as far away from his parents as possible, flies to sunny Los Angeles to begin his college career at the University of Southern California. The letters and phone calls grow fewer and soon the romance of their life has been lost, seemingly forever, and it is time for… Intermission. A Twenty-Year Intermission!* (During the Intermission a slight *Program Note may be helpful. A fundamental ingredient in the guys’ first love was that Craig introduced Travis to pro baseball, especially the Boston Red Sox, his heroes, while Travis has unveiled the Broadway musical stage, Ethel Merman, and original musical soundtracks to Craig.) ACT II: Twenty Years Later Fast forward twenty years. Craig has successfully completed both a Harvard undergrad degree and ever the Golden Boy, has also graduated with honors from Harvard Law School and now practices law in Saratoga, New York with his law school chum Charleen. Similarly, Travis has breezed through college degrees and gained a professorship at USC where he is an improbably popular history professor with jocks even though he is openly gay chiefly because he so successfully fascinates and holds the interests of athletes by relating the British Colonial period and the American Revolution to pro baseball. A sample final exam question in his class is: “Pick a Revolutionary War All-Star team that includes General Dan Morgan behind the plate and spitball pitcher Benjamin Franklin on the mound. Then pit them against the 1911 New York Giants. Box scores, please.” (p. 105) Twenty years later, after that magic summer of 1978, Travis is 37, leading a successful but largely desultory life and has still not found love, but has suffered at least a couple dozen broken hearts and another dozen close calls. Realizing that it is probably time to settle down into a committed relationship, he takes the man who most nearly arouses the passion he felt for Craig to dinner at a very expensive French restaurant, Le Petit Chalet, and just as he is all set to propose, suddenly, miraculously, and maddeningly, the orchestra chooses that very moment to play Lerner and Lowe’s incredibly lovely “Almost Like Being in Love” and magically, just as if he was a resident of Brigadoon, Travis awakens (about 80 years sooner than the rest of the village!) and comes to the realization that has been staring him in the face for two decades. “Craig. Craig with crinkly eyes and Craig who invented the single dimple and Craig who called me “Smerko” and Craig who taught me about cookie fights and Craig who never laughed at my popcorn and Craig who found a thousand ways to say ‘I Love You” without using any words. And we let it slip away from us. Just like that. Why do they entrust youth to kids?” (p. 111) ACT III: Travis Makes A Decision Travis needs no second wake-up call. No matter how maddeningly crazy it is, he begins a cross-country odyssey to find his first and only love, Craig. He had once known love and he let it slip away twenty years ago. George Washington crossing the icy Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 with 2500 starving and freezing men to surprise and defeat the Hessian troops could not have exhibited more persistence or greater resolve than Travis as he sets off to search the nation and reclaim Craig. Roger Marris’ 61st homer was an undersized achievement compared to Travis’ newly found zeal. Dramatis Personae The cast of characters in Almost Like Being in Love and their zip codes parallel the same expanse of the country of Craig and Travis’ lives and the same stretch of territory of Travis’ cross-country saga in search of his one true love. The cast of characters in Kluger’s romance is large enough to fill a company, including dancers and non-speaking roles, for a community theatre production, if not the entire original cast of “Brigadoon” in a Broadway revival. Moreover, they are all just as appealing. Indeed, one of Kluger’s premier attributes as a writer is his creation of both gay and straight characters that are often quirky, but almost always funny, disarmingly charming and who contribute significantly to the “feel good” appeal of his novels. On Travis’ side, twenty years later, there is still his satyr-like, sexually insatiable roommate Gordo who has become phenomenally successful as an unaccredited screenplay writer in Hollywood with much gratitude to but more than a little frustration for his dad, Henry A. Duboise, Hollywood’s Argosy Entertainment, Literary Representatives. Gordo’s business card may read Gordon Duboise, screenwriter, but his Internet URL is “GordoStud.com –home page of Gordon Duboise, screenwriter, lover, bon vivant.” (p. 101) Gordo shares an equal concern with the USC jocks for Travis’ future happiness and although the mold on his dirty clothes continues to grow unabated, so does reader fondness for him develop at a similar rate. Hopefully, it is not giving too much away to state that by the end of the novel, Gordo’s Internet site has changed to “GordoDad.com – home page of Gordon Duboise, screenwriter, father, former heartthrob.” (p. 340) There is also Travis’ devoted colleague and department chair, Andrea Fox, who has taken on the thankless task of desperately trying to find Travis a 30K grant he needs to write his seminal book ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND THE DESIGNATED HITTER. Also at Southern Cal, there is the handsome assistant college librarian, Julian Brennan, with whom Travis is finally thinking of settling down. (Hence the dinner date at Le Petit Chalet where the strains of the orchestra playing “Almost Like Being in Love” finally awaken Travis from his twenty-year nap.) Once awake and headed cross country with little money and only Gordo’s laptop to stay in touch and receive critical undercover information on Craig’s whereabouts, Travis hitches a ride with the ABBA-obsessed fan Brendan Tracey, the owner of an orange Corvette and who argues continuously with Travis about such subjects as matters of the heart in between ABBA songs and long stretches of silence until he becomes convinced, like his hitchhiker, that it is never too late to find one’s first and sole true love. A short trip with Brendan ends up being a full ride to St. Louis, where Travis recalls Craig’s mother practices medicine. It is a critical stopping point for Travis, but it is far from the end of the journey for Brendan. Travis’ magic has rubbed off on him as well. Brendan heads for Chicago to find his first sweetheart , Jennifer, still single and ready to reunite. To his dismay, Travis confirms that Craig’s mother is indeed Dr. Louise McKenna, but is shocked to learn that her specialization is OB/GYN and his chances for an appointment with her are just as impossible as her willingness to provide him with any information about her son. Dr. McKenna does not mind that her son is gay, but she is insistent that he marry a doctor! Desperate, Travis asks A. J., the sexy owner of Streaker’s Restaurant and Bar in St. Louis (“Around the corner from the St. Louis Cardinals”) where he camps out to pretend she is his wife and will undergo a pelvic examination in order to gain access to Craig’s whereabouts. When A. J. refuses, Travis is caught trespassing in the middle of the night in Dr. McKenna’s office frantically searching for the Craig’s whereabouts. It becomes clear that Travis needs custodial care so A. J. bails him out of jail, gives him a couch to sleep on, and ultimately becomes his chauffer and partner in romantic crime all the way to Saratoga, New York. Thanks to Gordo’s lap top, A. J. and Gordo strike up a “dial up” love affair in which they share joint custody of the lovesick and slightly unhinged Travis. Craig’s cast of characters is even larger. There is Charleen Webb, first his Harvard pal and now his full partner McKenna and Webb, A Law Partnership, in the Saratoga, New York. There is the brawny and handsome Clayton, who first saved Craig’s behind at Harvard when the latter’s Harvey Milk vigil turned into a full-scale riot and who now owns both a hardware store and a construction company in Saratoga and pines to marry Craig complete with ring, European honeymoon, rice, and the promise of a long-term commitment to a loving, quiet, and peaceful domestic family life. Craig and Charleen’s office manager is the adorable but fiercely efficient and very gay Brian who has a secret crush on Clayton. Kluger loves kids -- just possibly even more than Ethel Merman and the Boston Red Sox – and just as he made Joey Margolis the hero of Last Days of Summer, he introduces Noah Kessler, a nine-year-old runaway whom Craig takes on as a client in a bitter custody battle. The youthful Noah becomes Craig’s romantic adviser just as Craig, forever the bleeding heart liberal, futilely attempts to win Noah the right to live at least half the year with his Dad, Jody Kessler, once a high school sports hero who has had a particularly long streak of hard luck and is now a semi-pro itinerant baseball player currently in Utica. Jody made it to the Big Show once just long enough to strike out three times at bat and spend a lot of time on the bench. In the off season, he fixes cars for a meager living that is not nearly substantial enough to support his son in the manner to which his first wife, Annette, has become accustomed. She has married a plutocrat, travels extensively in Europe, and leaves her son with a German nanny cum housekeeper and refuses any attempts to allow her son to share in her first husband’s pathetically nomadic semi-pro baseball life. Other minor players include Wayne Duvall, the New York State Democratic Party chair who is trying to convince Craig to run for the legislature (a secret Craig keeps from Clayton). Production Notes: EPHEMRA Readers new to the writing of Steve Kluger may require a few pages to become used to his epistolary novel (a Travis-like BIG word that merely translates to a work of fiction revealed through letters as opposed to a standard narrative). The use of notes, letters, newspaper clippings, and other documents was at the heart of his novel, Last Days of Summer, but a considerable chunk of narrative remained. In Almost Like Being in Love, Kluger uses an even wider array of emphera (That’s another Travis BIG word that simply means “printed matter”) to weave his comical tale of Travis’ quirky and quixotic odyssey to reclaim Craig. Here, Kluger depends almost entirely on ephemera that includes but is by no means limited to entries from journals and diaries, personal and official letters, legal briefs and records of court proceedings, inter-office and intra-office memos, Post-It Notes, restaurant menus, political campaign literature, bumper stickers, newspaper stories (The Saratoga Courant), lovers’ notes, a play-by-play of five rounds in a gay lovers’ quarrel – complete with box scores, emails and web home pages, Peabody’s Contemporary Criticism (don’t ask), the Puckett/Duboise Debates (Gordo & Travis on such diverse issues as gay and straight love affairs and moldy clothing), the Baseball Encyclopedia and The Baseball Almanac, one forged application by “Anita Bryant” requesting membership in the Aryan Nation, and countless other written or electronically conveyed printed matter that once adjusted to by willing readers actually moves the plot along at lightening pace and further succeeds in making them feel like co-conspirators with Kluger in first plotting and then telling a very funny and sweet story. Kluger’s narrative style not only produces laughter, it makes the reading of the novel seem intensely personal. Two of the funniest sets of entries are “Travis Puckett’s Boyfriend Checklist” complete with its three-tiered divisions of “Beginner,” “Intermediate,” and “Top of the Line” entries and his college final exam questions (plus the answers from USC jocks who have ended up giving love life advice to Travis with a sympathy not unlike Hans Christian Andersen displayed for “The Little Match Girl,” except in Travis’ case he is the “Little Gay Boy” without a match. While some readers may find the improbable plot line or “inside joke” told with bits and scraps of imaginatively created paper (or computer screens) takes too long to unravel or contains memoranda that might better have seen a paper shredder than the pages of a novel, this reviewer fell in love with Kluger’s creative format and witty style and wished the ending had not arrived all too soon. The final page seemed less an ending than the disappointed feeling one has in a room full of friends when the best punch line of the best joke has been revealed and a kind of hush falls over the crowd because everyone knows that no one else will equal the yarn they have just heard. Theatre Review – “Almost Like Being in Love” Deserves the Tony Award Jerry Flack, Theatre Critic, Denver Post In a slightly different (but far better written) manner the essence of Almost Like Being in Love boils down to the chance meeting and dialogue Craig and Travis (AKA “Smerko”) have just after Craig and Charleen (with a LOT of help from Clayton) have FINALLY won the custody battle for Noah and Jody. Recapping twenty years of their divergent life paths, Craig begins: “I started college, made trouble, met Clayton, turned into a lawyer, got this offer from the Democrats and missed you. Your turn.” (p. 328) Travis: “I started college, found the sacrifice fly rule in The Federalist Papers, earned my teaching degree, broke up with twenty-seven boyfriends who all looked like you, got a $30,000 grant that I put on hold when I heard ‘Almost Like Being in Love’ again, and missed you back.” (p. 329) Fortunately, Kluger does not confine his gay characters to a GLBT literary ghetto. The inclusion of straight romantic subplots, farce, snappy humor, and sports (especially pro baseball) has made Almost Like Being in Love a cross-over novel popular with both gay and straight audiences. Yes, his Craig and Travis show may seem lightweight, but he is also sharing with a broad audience an important fact GLBT readers and writers appear to believe: love is love is love and it can be eternal whether it is gay or straight. That is a fine accomplishment. “Standing ovation, Please!” Jerry Flack Denver, Colorado ____________________________________________________ Incidentally, for information on Kluger’s other books, his battle to save Boston’s original Fenway Park, his ongoing political warfare with the Department of Interior to restore the baseball playing field at the Japanese American internment camp at the Manzanar National Historic Site (CA) plus his views on gay baseball players in the big leagues, not to mention the reappearance of the Washington Senators and what baseball means to America’s future, be sure to visit Kluger chock-full, sensitive, funny and altogether enjoyable home page: http://www.stevekluger.com/index.html and other sites devoted to Kluger-mania via your favorite web browser. There is a lot of both Craig and Travis wrapped up in Steve Kluger: Author, Red sox Fan, Uncle—and every word is a treat. Copyright©, All rights
reserved, Jerry Flack
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