Satire Without Spark

IMPORTANT PEOPLE (339 pp.--Robert Van Gelder--Doubleday ($3 .

Almost two years ago, big, amiable Robert Harlan Van Gelder quit his job as editor of the New York Times Book Review to write his first novel. On the strength of his name, an opening chapter and an outline of what was to come, his publishers had given him an unprecedented advance of $20,000. For all of three days (a long life for that kind of gossip), it was the talk of the trade.

Author Van Gelder calls Important People "a kind of Currier & Ives of the current scene" and his publishers promise "a savage and deeply probing novel of the rich and frightening influential society of our time." He tells the story of Hero Dixon West, a rich kid but nice, who comes back from combat in the Pacific anxious to use his wealth constructively but not sure how to go about it. Grandfather West, crusty and conservative owner of a powerful chain of magazines, looks at first to Dixon like a threat to the good life, and finally seems like the man to emulate. Dixon's father is a boozy weakling; mother is a sentimental hypochondriac. Mig Holmes, the handsome body Dixon finally marries, is a near-dipsomaniac widow of good family but dwindling fortune.

With such unpleasant people to pillory, and New York's pseudo-society and phony-intellectual scene to prowl about in, a sharp satirist should be able to get in some telling licks. But Van Gelder simply hasn't the satirist's spark, nor even a malicious ear for dialogue, without which good satire is impossible.

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