Foolscap: Or, the Stages of Love Book

This book kind of called to me in a used book sale I was strolling through back in October. The promise of stage intrigue, English locations, and even some friendly skewering of academia, college professors and administrators in particular was a draw to me that did not disappoint...for the first ten chapters or so.

Yet after that I began to ask here and there where exactly the author was headed. By the halfway point, the book became guilty of providing too much of a good thing, if you will.

As an actor, Anglophile of sorts, and critic of higher education, I did enjoy the initial references to and satire of all three. Yet more of that piled on top of more, stereotypical character eased into another stereotypical character, and friendly lampooning became repetitive, and then overwhelming at times. It was done with too many characters, far too often, along way too many side roads for the story to hold up.

My quick estimation was that about 10 of the characters and at least three of the incidents in the novel were entirely superfluous, save for the opportunities it afforded the author to satirize something. But no sooner have we gotten to know characters like Jorvelle Wakefield and Steve Weiner than they essentially vanish entirely from the novel, save but a brief mention here and there-including a highly predictable and equally unnecessary final chapter that mentioned, almost in passing, where every character ended up...no matter how small their presence was in the actual story. Who cares?

Not I, after spending 100 pages with people who are then nothing more than a footnote for the remaining 200+ pages. Yet the book ends as though we fell in love with people that really had no time to make an impact.

Bogging things down even more were totally unrelated subplots that were neither entertaining in their own right, nor illustrative of the actual plot. There was, I maintain, not a single thing added to this novel for so much as a moment, by anything having to do with Dean Tupper. (Again, except for a chance to lampoon a football has-been turned bureaucrat.)

I had to put this book down for a few weeks, because I was moving to a new house. But even then, it had been slowing down quite a bit before I stopped, and it took some doing to pick it back up again. Like eating an entire cake on one's own in one sitting, what could have been sweet flavoring for a meal ended up being entirely too much of a good thing.

By the time Foolscap realizes it needs to end the self-indulgent, quasi-literary dalliances it has established over the previous 200 pages, the raison-detre of the book, the forgery, is given the shortest possible shrift. Sentences started to open with phrases such as, "Three months later," or "two years later". This was disappointing, having spent virtually every painstaking moment with every person at Cavendish over a three month period in the first half of the book.

Oddly enough, I enjoyed the Epilogue the most. There the author captures the essence of the beautiful lunacy that is being both a writer and an actor. A glorious mood he strikes but for mere moments throughout the work, but which the jacket seemed to indicate would be present throughout. I admire the message, and the obvious passion with which the author pursued it (eventually). But due to one too many stereotypes, academic references, set pieces, and plain digressions, I can't recommend the book. I think the man who wrote it would probably be more fun to talk to about theatre and writing, than reading his novel that is allegedly about characters doing the same.