About Harry Towns By Bruce Jay Friedman
Knopf, 180 pp., $5.95 Twelve years have passed since Bruce Jay Friedman published his memorable first novel, Stern, and one can only wonder if he will ever produce work of that quality again. The quietly desperate, paranoid Stern, who always seemed just a step away from catastrophe, was a delightful and often touching creation. Friedman delivered his mildly absurd story in a straightforward, subdued, and unadorned manner, as if he were relating a little fable. The humor came easily, naturally. In Friedman’s subsequent novels, however, such control and sophistication were noticeably absent. A Mother’s Kisses, a big popular success, was good for its consistent series of comic setups (yielding jokes about the Jewish mother, adolescent sex, etc.), but for little else. The Dick, focusing on a pr man for a homicide bureau, was a rather haphazardly structured book stuffed with labored topical humor.
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