THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 4, 1995 TAG: 9510040039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JENNIFER DAVIS McDAID
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
WINSTON GROOM'S ``Gump & Co.'' (Pocket Books, 242 pp., $22) is like a box of chocolates without the inside-cover map, with some parts nutty, some sweet and some just plain mysterious. All in all, it does not make for nutritious reading.
In his sequel to ``Forrest Gump,'' Groom has written a sweeping yarn in which his hero meets Jim and Tammy Bakker, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Saddam Hussein and (of course) that ``pretty good'' actor, Tom Hanks. Groom's tale is a romp through the excesses and eccentricities of the 1980s, from the PTL Club to New Coke.
Gump, ``The Most Lovable Certified Idiot in America,'' has fallen on hard times since the last book left him at the helm of the prosperous Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. The business bankrupt, Gump struggles to support his son, little Forrest, and ventures from one misadventure to another.
Gump is sweeping floors in a strip joint when an old friend gets him a job playing football for the New Orleans Saints. Hopes for a victorious season are dashed, however, when Gump hears that his friend Jenny has died and he hops a bus to Mobile, leaving the Saints to be pummeled by the Dallas Cowboys. Out of work again, Gump sells encyclopedias door-to-door, then stumbles into a job trying to improve the taste of New Coke.
Fleeing from a riot of irate cola drinkers in Atlanta, Gump hitches a ride on a truck headed for West Virginia. With the help of little Forrest, he forges a pig-raising empire until an explosion covers ``everything and everyone in sight with an unsightly patina of swine manure.'' On the run again, Gump meets up with his friend Dan from Vietnam.
The second half of the book is much like the first, with Gump providing a first-person account of his ``checkered career.'' Life has a way of intersecting with history-in-the-making for Gump, who before the book's ending has participated in the Iran-contra affair, piloted the ill-fated Exxon-Valdez and inadvertently brought down the Berlin Wall.
Amusing in parts, ``Gump & Co.'' is, overall, not a particularly fun book. While Groom offers a satirical view of the 1980s, and a sobering commentary on Americans' treament of those less fortunate or different from themselves, ``Gump & Co.'' ultimately falls flat. From the Tom Hanks-like Gump on the cover to Forrest's contrived attendance at the Academy Awards, Groom's second installment of the Gump odyssey seems like so much self-serving commercialism. Paramount Pictures has already purchased the rights to ``Gump & Co.,'' undoubtedly expecting another blockbuster hit.
Early on in the book, I saw a glimmer of Forrest as Everyman, struggling in his own way to bring out the good in a world full of injustice. For example, Groom successfully skewers evangelist Jim Bakker by casting Gump as Goliath in a theme-park Holy Land, where tourists flock to the ``Jesus Ascending to Heaven'' ride and a runaway lion exposes Bakker and Jessica Hahn in the bulrushes ``minus their clothes.''
Such clever satire, however, disintegrates into a series of shallow episodes seemingly written by rote. Gump as the champion of the pure at heart becomes simply Gump warning the reader to ``never let nobody make a movie of your life story.''
Early on in the book Tom Hanks meets Gump and tries to sell him a box of chocolates. Gump declines. Readers would be wise to do the same, since ``Gump & Co.,'' despite its slick packaging and publicity fanfare, is empty. MEMO: Jennifer Davis McDaid works at the Virginia State Library and Archives
in Richmond. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Winston Groom takes Forrest, and America, through another decade.
by CNB