DATE: Wednesday, October 29, 1997           TAG: 9710290813

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY BERNICE GROHSKOPF 

                                            LENGTH:   80 lines

UNFOCUSED IDEAS, FUZZY CHARACTERS SINK NOVEL

LARRY BAKER'S ``The Flamingo Rising,'' his first novel, opens as a story of two Korean-born orphans, adopted by American parents, adjusting to life in the United States. But that theme drifts away as a series of other possible themes drift in, including a modern-day Capulet/Montague tale, recorded as a memoir by ``Romeo.''

In 1953, when Hubert Lee returns to north Florida from Korea, he presents his wife, Edna, with two beautiful babies, a boy and girl, born the same day in a Korean orphanage hospital: Abraham Isaac Lee and Louise Lee. Early on, Abe realizes he looks ``different''; he also broods about who his ``real'' parents were. But these problems are overshadowed by the problems of growing up the son of Hubert Lee, a flamboyant, egomaniacal, irrational owner of the Flamingo, the largest drive-in theater in the world.

Hubert Lee is 5-foot-9, and adores his wife, Edna, who is 6 feet tall. Edna loves Hubert, thinks he's brilliant and willingly works at the Flamingo's concession stand, or sells tickets at the box office. She has a Ph.D. in 18th century literature (unspecified country), and teaches at a nearby college. In her spare time she soothes Hubert's perpetually ruffled feathers.

What ruffles them is his neighbor, Turner West, who built the Turner West Funeral Home before Lee and his Flamingo arrived. Lee wants to own all the land, and does his best to oust West, a gentlemanly, rational man who resists reacting to Lee's offensive, childish behavior: He blasts movies such as ``Body Grinders'' and ``Flesh Feast'' through the loud speakers.

Edna gently reminds Hubert that the mourners at Turner's funeral home might be offended.

It's difficult to believe Hubert is a Southern aristocrat descended from Robert E. Lee, that he met his wife Edna in a seminar on Dante, that he has an unfinished dissertation on American Romantics and that his favorite piece of music is Mahler's First.

At Hubert's insistence, Abe and Louise are educated at home because Hubert disapproves of the school system. Gradually, Edna sweet-talks him into realizing that their children need to be in the company of other children. Off they go to St. Agnes, the nearest private Catholic school, where Abe (Romeo) meets, and instantly falls in love with, Grace West (Juliet), daughter of Turner West, Daddy's enemy.

Not to worry. A tale of star-crossed lovers this isn't.

This episodic novel presents a wide selection of unconnected ideas and undelineated characters that include: an emotionally unstable judge who is calm only when flying his plane; assorted unsavory females whose conversation centers on a variety of vulgarities; a mad dog, plus an overview of '60s films, extravagant descriptions of Hubert's annual July Fourth fireworks spectaculars, the unexpected revelation that Turner West is in love with Edna Lee and a suspense-filled chapter titled ``Death in the Toilet.''

Abe's memoir shifts arbitrarily from past (what's playing at the Flamingo) to present (married to Grace, with three sons), interspersed with heavy-handed foreshadowings of the big fire. It reads as though Larry Baker had too many ideas for one book, and after exploring several random ``inspirations'' he decided that what he really wanted to say was something profoundly spiritual. Perhaps some readers will understand his epiphany, when he ``saw inside of the Fourth (of July): the Stations of the Cross, the Annunciation, the Martyrdom of Saints, Birth, Crucifixion, Resurrection,'' etc.

At the end of the book Abe assures the reader that he attends Sunday Mass regularly.

Baker, who has run drive-ins in Oklahoma, writes in the compelling style of an insurance company's annual report, including such profound observations as: ``The difference between sex and death is the difference between sight and sound.'' An abundance of grammatical errors made me wonder if Baker was trying to create a Holden Caulfield of the '60s.

But Abe is nothing like J.D. Salinger's hero, and it's more likely that Baker and his editors were too busy envisioning this book as a blockbuster film to attend to incidentals. MEMO: Bernice Grohskopf is a free-lance writer and critic who lives in

Charlottesville. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

BOOK REVIEW

``The Flamingo Rising''

Author: Larry Baker

Publisher: Random House.

309 pp.

Price: $24

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