Foolscap

After reading seven of Michael Malone's novels in little over a year, and five in the past month and a half, I didn't think that anything he wrote could surprise me, other than that his books are all so good, but Foolscap is a surprise. It's not better than the best of his other novels (Handling Sin, Time's Witness, Dingley Falls) but it goes off in a different direction than any of them, it employs a different narrative strategy and thus sits at a different angle to literal reality. " Facts are cattle," says Dame Winifred Throckmorton, a noted but slightly batty sir Walter Raleigh scholar. "Theory is a bird. One must leap, in order to soar." This lively comic novel about the forging of a last-minute play supposedly written by the Elizabethan Golden Man Raleigh definitely leaps and just as definitely soars. In capsule, the story is of a quiet, mildly depressed and definitely suppressed theatrical scholar, Theo Ryan, and his liberation through prolonged, always exhilarating and almost as often irritating contact with Ford Rexford, perhaps the greatest living writer of plays in the English language. My God, can Malone write -and plot! There are enough memorable characters and incidents in here for a half dozen books, but none better than the irrepressible Dame Winifred and the alcoholic Bad Boy Ford Rexford. ("It's like art, kid," the ghost of Rexford tells Theo, "It's like me. It doesn't have to be real. It just has to be true.") And there at least three or four lesser characters who are just as winning. This is a very generous book and n one benefits more than the reader fortunate enough to sit down with it and savor its pleasures. To top it off, there is an understated but quite wonderful love story in these pages, between Theo and the salty country western singer Rhodora Potts. The book ends in lovely fantasia, Theo's thoughts as he waits for his now-wife Rhodora to go on stage at the Grand Old Opry: he sees all the actors and performers he's known in his life, including his mother (summer stock and musicals) and father (a lesser rock and roll idol, whose one hit, "Do the Duck," still sustains him decades later). "Out from the wings, Theo saw his farther, Benny Ryan, slide tantalizingly onto stage with his arms outflung, offering himself, a dream come true. And the young girls shrieked like Maenads the incantation of his name. "He saw his mother, Lorraine Page, beautiful young, and safe in the light, talking to darkness from a summer-stock stage. "There in shadows in the wings, Theo saw his parents' friends: Sweets, the former child star, and Catherine, the former soaps star; all the former stars, now forgotten, and all the company of players who were never to be star, all of them banded together waiting to go act out life so that people seeing their show could learn -or remember--how life feels. "The players bowed all together there in the shadows of the wings. Theo shouted and whistled as loudly as he could, and

I love this book! It's funny, smart and slyly witty. Mr. Malone is brilliant at capturing the aura of the situation. If you want a fantasy to transport you to other realms, take the Foolscap ride.

I first read Foolscap in its hardcover release and was taken with its blend of wacky plot, warm-hearted character development and erudite but accessible literary and historical reference.As the years have gone by, I find myself returning to the book when I need a good kick in the butt - it makes a marvelous case for taking chances and believing in yourself in order to build a rich, satisfying life.Also, Michael Malone has a talent for creating some of the most attractive male characters I've ever come across. Theo Ryan from this book and Cuddy and Justin from the Hillston series are great guys to spend some time with.

As a former academic, I loved this book! Malone does a great job revealing the lunacies which characterize modern academia. The professors at Cavendish University will be very familiar to anyone who has spent any time at all at an American university. The story itself is also quite fun---even if you aren't a fan of Walter Raleigh (as Malone clearly is---this is not his first book to discuss Raleigh). Malone has a great sense of humor and the book, which follows the exploits of Theo Ryan, mild-mannered professor turned literary forger, is the kind which makes you laugh out loud. Avoid reading this in public unless you are comfortable having people watch you suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter.

The world of academia has always taken itself very seriously, and so when a writer like Kingsley Amis, Jane Smiley, David Lodge, or Robert Grudin parodies this seriousness, it makes for wonderful reading. Malone's parody of a fictional North Carolina university extends the parody beyond the ivory tower and into the worlds of publishing and theater. It tells the story of biographer, playwright, literary forger Theo Ryan, a professor with a big heart and a sound mind who is a bit naive. It's his touch of innocence that makes his tale so charming as Ryan goes back and forth between England and the USA, trying to do well by all and finding himself in farcical situations, despite his good will. It's a sometimes dark, but ultimately cheering comedy where love wins out and the truth prevail!