Megomcmia

A MOTHER'S KISSES by Bruce Jay Friedman. 286 pages. Simon & Schuster. $4.95.

Seventeen-year-old Joseph, the beleaguered anti-hero of Bruce Jay Friedman's second novel, is subjected to nearly as many adolescent indignities as his Biblical namesake had to suffer. Instead of being tossed down a well by envious brothers, this Joseph is tyrannized by his mother Meg, a bosomy termagant with some of the less attractive qualities of Medea, Medusa and Jocasta.

Defective Plumbing. Harrowed by fear that he will not get into college, Joseph is plucked from Brooklyn's comforting concrete and deposited in a summer camp to work as a waiter. Among other curiosa, the camp boasts a sullen horse that looks like Robert Ryan, and children who have "the faces of middle-aged manufacturers." He makes sad love to a girl camper who when her breasts are caressed emits a horrendous squawk like a "sudden plumbing defect in a far-off house at midnight." When his last college application is turned down, Joseph consoles himself by rifling the lockers of the other waiters and, being Joseph, gets caught.

Mama Meg comes to the rescue in a high declamatory style that would send a deaf-mute up the wall. Untoppable and unstoppable in a slanging natch, she routs the foxy old camp director and triumphantly bears Joseph off, clucking: "Did your mother ever let you down? Will you please learn to put your last buck down on this baby?"

With Joseph in tow, Meg descends next on a Kansas cow college, where even French is taught with a barnyard accent. Joseph gets blackballed after she tries to bribe a fraternity with a bagful of Popsicles; when he goes out on a date, she chases after him in a police car. His only release from maternal smotheration comes when Meg is mustering new men friends in the hotel bar.

333 R.P.M. Meg is a blow-up of a caricature, a manic Yiddisher Momma. Her every 25-c- tip is accompanied by loud self-congratulation, her compulsive camaraderie is lavished on clerks and big shots alike, her flattery is as subtle as an uppercut. Mama's venom kills, but not so swiftly as her hot, Oedipal affection. "Come," she wheedles Joseph. "I just made a lap. Come over here fast and I'll be your social life."

Author Friedman, 34, and an editor of adventure magazines, employs a distinctive, metaphor-strewn prose whose characteristic sound is that of a 33-r.p.m. record being played at 333. Anxiety rides every page, and the wit is wounding.

A Mother's Kisses is an even funnier book than Stern, Friedman's highly praised first novel, but it is somewhat less well organized and smaller in scope. And it is partly a product of cannibalization--several long sections are based on earlier short stories--raising a question of Friedman's ability to break new ground. His Stern was fresh, vigorous and unsettling. A Mother's Kisses fully merits only the two latter adjectives. But few other current novels can claim as much.

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