Mid-Life Throes 50

By Stefan Kanfer

His first book, Oh, God!, provided the base for three George Burns movies. His third sold few hardback copies, but everyone knew its name after Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep appeared in the film adaptation of Kramer vs. Kramer. This latest work, too, is scheduled to go before the cameras. Once again, viewers are likely to outnumber readers. A pity; Avery Corman, 51, has a literary gift for dialogue and predicament. Sealed in a time capsule, 50 could tell future generations more about contemporary middle-age mores than a library of sociological theses.

In his late 40s, Sports Columnist Doug Gardner is divorced. His ex-wife glamorously remarries and surrounds their teenagers with luxuries. Doug is suddenly uncertain of anything, even jogging: Do you get the benefits of extra endurance now, he wonders, "when you're still able to eat a pastrami sandwich, or at the end when you're already on a life-support system?" The gloomy sportswriter imagines his own funeral, but it is only his columns that die. Corman offers savage, sparkling portraits of the hustlers and operators of professional sport, including a newspaper owner who believes in the lowest common dominator: the semiliterate reader who wants upbeat features.

Socially, Doug is a dependable loser. His technicolor fantasies fail to arouse young women, who think of him as a black-and-white rerun; the older ones are even more bathetic than he is. Worse, the mirror reminds Doug that the half-century mark looms: "50! 50 was General MacArthur . . . the school principal . . . 50 was Abby Meltzner, the delicatessen waiter his parents knew, who retired with the shakes. 'Put down the glass, Abby,' his boss had said. 'You have to go home.' 'I'll go home,' Abby replied. 'But I can't put down the glass.' "

Unemployed, estranged from love and family, Doug wonders if redemption is possible in the throes of mid-life. It is, and therein lies the book's forgivable flaw. Without warning, the author seems to suffer a failure of nerve, as if the pain of his protagonist were too much for the reader (or perhaps the screen) to bear. Until its sun-washed finale, 50 maintains Corman's gift for putting acute observations in a comic package. But this time out, buyers should discard the pretty pink wrap-up.