Three Balconies

September 15, 2008
Since Stern (1962) madehim a bright new star among the black-humorists of the late 1950searly 1960s, Friedman has produced seven more novels, five volumes of stories (counting this one), three plays, and five screenplays to seemingly decreasing acclaim. That he deserves better, his clean, efficient, but hardly mechanical prose strongly argues. That perhaps he doesnt, after all, the repulsive emptiness of his protagonists counterindicates. They are nearly all writers who gravitated to Hollywood after successful first novels and became, eventually, hangers-on and has-beens now motivated only by horniness persisting long after the looks, even the capacity, needed to appease it have flown. The epitome of the state theyre in is Harrys in Three Balconies: happily enough remarried, with a lovely daughter and in reasonable comfort, but having to fight the urge to jump from every balcony he steps out on. Two storiesextended Jewish jokes, reallyhave very funny payoffs, and many more are studded with funny bits, but for anyone with positive morals, they are generally more sad than funny, and irksomely affecting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)