When you’re dealing with someone as talented and literary as Roger Rosenblatt (name an upscale magazine he hasn’t written for), there’s a temptation to view his deep-seated need to think aloud as smug pedantry. That side of Rosenblatt burst into ugly flower in his off-Broadway show, and. However, Rosenblatt shows off his best side when it’s just himself in a lecture-style presentation. It worked in 1991’s Free Speech in America, and it works again in Rosenblatt’s paean to books, Bibliomania, currently at the American Place Theater.
Opening and closing the brief piece are whimsical bits that connect unlikely literary works. The prologue is pure word association (“James Joyce--Joyce Carol Oates--Joyce Kilmer--I think that I shall never see . . . James Branch”), the coda a fairy tale in which famous fictional characters tangle their stories into a single comic nightmare. These flights of fantasy have a bit of the know-it-all about them, so when a line fails to get a laugh, we’re left uneasily wondering when the professor will go back to sharing his love of lit instead of merely showing off.
But enough quibbling. With his casual sweater and truly interested glances at the audience, Rosenblatt makes an effectively amiable tour guide through the world of great books, libraries, Strands and Superstores, browsing, critics, and the life of a writer. Among the best stories are Rosenblatt’s first visit to a book auction (“Sold to Mr. Frozenwemm!”) and his recollection of the professor who turned him from a non-achiever into a lifelong scholar.
Roger Rosenblatt advances the theory that, although billions of writers have written zillions of books about all conceivable subjects, every book ever written is really part of one great, overarching novel that stretches across our lives. It’s enough to make bibliomaniacs of us all.
