Joe Keenan is a very witty writer. Before his long stint with Frasier, he wrote two novels (Blue Heaven and Putting on the Ritz) that had almost an overabundance of great lines, matched only by the clockwork perfection of his comic plot twists. Now that Frasier is over, he’s returned to novel writing with My Lucky Star.
It features the same character set: writer Philip Cavanaugh, endearingly unlucky in love and career; Gilbert Selwyn, whose ambition is matched only by his laziness and capacity for disastrous schemes; and composer Claire Simmons, Philip’s writing partner and a paragon of good sense who’s invariably called upon to rescue Philip and Gilbert from the spiraling consequences of their apparently foolproof schemes. (The schemes had never counted on these particular fools.)
Gilbert inevitably draws Philip (and, by extension, Claire) into some ridiculous con that will, he swears, leave them draped in glory. Philip is somewhere halfway between shortcut-loving Gilbert and I-dotting, T-crossing Claire, which makes him an ideal narrator. When he ignores that little voice in his head that sounds like Claire, you can generally understand and sympathize.
In previous books, Philip and company set their sights on undoubtedly worthy targets. In Blue Heaven, they attempt to co-opt the exclusionary rituals of traditional family values for their own gain. In Ritz, they hope to expose profoundly awful Trump-esque greedheads to ridicule and scorn. (Well, more ridicule and scorn than they receive naturally.)
In Star, the target is a bit more problematic. To secure jobs as screenwriters, Philip and Gilbert agree to help a Cruise-ish megastar stay in the closet. Gilbert is motivated by his hunger for low-effort celebrity (since Philip and Claire would do all the actual writing, and he’d still see his name in the credits), and Philip is driven by lust for the closeted mega-star. Essentially, the ethics are reversed. Instead of trying to subvert a corrupt system or social construct, the characters are trying to maintain an unpleasant status quo for the sake of different permutations of greed. There’s one character who comes down squarely on the side of honesty, but his motives are so selfish and his mien so creepy that he’s ultimately irrelevant.
It’s a difficult sell, and it falls into most of the traps of closeted-celebrity comedy. Irritating and transparent as the facades are, and entertaining as it is to dissect them, the writer isn’t left with many narrative options. Actually out the fictional star, and you’re left with the choice of an ending can be viewed as either excessively optimistic (the public embraces him anyways) or just plain depressing (his comeuppance arrives in the form of obscurity and scorn). Construct things in a way that the character stays in the closet, essentially unpunished for his dishonesty except with some more-heightened-than-usual moments of fear of exposure, and you haven’t really said anything about the subject. Then there’s the question of whether any punishment is merited at all for that kind of personal choice. (I’m in the camp that wants to know less about the personal life of celebrities… the less the better.)
And the celebrity in this case, thinking man’s action hero Steven Donato, isn’t interesting enough to inspire either sympathy or hissing. He’s a standard-issue Hollywood type – handsome, charismatic, and self-serving. Keenan can’t quite bring himself to endorse the celebrity closet, but his usual narrative balancing act demands that he keep sympathies shifting and plot twisting. Keenan isn’t as successful as he usually is, partly because he seems unable to treat a soft target as a soft target.
Readers of Blue Heaven might have a mixed reaction to the return of that book’s primary antagonist, sociopath Moira Finch. The initial thrill of the character was Keenan’s ability to peel away her layers of awfulness to reveal fresh horror lurking underneath. Just when you thought she couldn’t sink any lower, voila, down she went. Here, she’s a known quantity, and Gilbert and Philip seem particularly foolish to expect anything but the worst of her. She’s still a delightful pot-stirrer, but she’s lost the element of surprise.
There’s still plenty of Keenan’s terrific wordplay to My Lucky Star. I laughed out loud at several points. But while it isn’t surprising that Keenan has put his cast into a no-win situation (it’s the formula), it’s difficult to see how they could have thought there was anything worth winning from this scenario in the first place.