The Actual Adventures of Michael Missing

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAR 4, 1991

The 11 slick, sophomoric tales in this slender collection follow the predictable grooves of brat-pack fiction. The wisecracking, foul-mouthed narrator--in some incarnations a teenager, sometimes in his early 20s--oozes unearned, fashionable cynicism and wears many personas. As ``Michael Famous,'' he bashes in a man's skull with a baseball bat with calm remorselessness and elation. As ``Michael Missingeok ,'' he is right-hand man and lover of a 19th-century French pirate-rapist. In one story, Missing asks his aunt what it was like to be a prostitute, then has sex with her, then hauls cocaine and stolen goods for his uncle; in another, he threatens a misbehaving little girl by holding a gun to her head; in yet another, he recalls posing with a dead dog for a photograph, then has fetishistic sex with his eighth-grade teacher. Other pieces attempt satirical commentaries on baseball, hippies and the art world. In their sudden transitions, flip tone, gratuitous sex and violence, these snide stories resemble ``underground'' comics--and are just as two-dimensional.