Red Diaper Baby: Three Comic Monologues

Fiction. Performing Arts. RED DIAPER BABY includes three comic autobiographical monologues by performer Josh Kornbluth: "The Mathematics of Change," "Haiku Tunnel," and the title piece. Together, and with the author's introduction, the monologues compose a bildungsroman that is both comic and poignant. Kornbluth shows a deep affection for the wild, eccentric characters who people his universe. With a few deft strokes he paints unforgettable portraits, as true as they are funny. Together the monologues achieve real literary form and depth, as we witness a young man coming of age in a world that is anything but conventional. "These monologues have a performer's personality even on the page. They read the way they play: with a delight in neurosis that turns it into intellectual slapstick"—Pauline Kael.

The flap copy says Kornbluth is a journalist, but in these three autobiographical monologues, he will remind people of performance artist Spalding Gray. Like Gray, Kornbluth has a talent for presenting the minutiae of his life in a manner that is both hysterically funny and absolutely fascinating. Of course, Kornbluth has a lot to work with. In the title piece, which was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, he recalls life with his father, an ardent Communist who liked to run around nude and woke his son up with the Internationale, the Communist anthem: "Arise, ye prisoner of starvation," which made sense to young Jesse because it was five in the morning, and he was hungry. "My father believed there was going to be a violent Communist revolution in this country--and I was going to lead it. Just so you get a sense of the pressure." In "The Mathematics of Change," Kornbluth chronicles his life as a Princeton math major, while in "Haiku Tunnel," he embarks on his career as a novelist. Pithy, pure, and very funny stuff. Ilene Cooper

The best humor is familiar to all but firmly grounded in the real world. Kornbluth's familiar real world is clearly New York from the beginning monolog, "Red Diaper Baby." This first-person account of growing up in the Sixties with an imposing Communistic father constitutes a vivid and delightful portrait of the man. In "Mathematics of Change," we find Josh at college, confronted with scholastic competition for the first time. Josh's witty, painful death by calculus is shared directly by the reader as his identity is transformed. "Haiku Tunnel," soon to be a movie, gets right to the heart of office life as viewed through the eyes of those who temp. Wickedly funny, it has a surprise ending, which provides the reader with a morsel of hope. Each monolog is quick, satisfying reading, very funny and very human. These reflections of urban life are well recommended.?Sue Olcott, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.