The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 167

PERFECT TOGETHER ing Dr. Dore (pronounced dough-ray), who runs Clinique Dore, a shady counseling service located in a shopping mall. And although the book is well-written and engaging, the main characters are so relentlessly dreadful that a reader resists being committed to them. Fran is bitchy and out of control, with a glimmer of professional ethics but few interpersonal ones. By the end she becomes less of a caricature, but by then it is hard to forgive her.

Charlie is such a nebbish that his emotional acrobatics are invariably tedious, and Ellie is alternately bovine stereotypical-ly working class and implausibly literate. Even Fran's artsy-cutesy European mother, guided by astrology, wears thin. Monty, the baby, is a genuine charmer, and Kerner's decency is a welcome relief, but they are not central enough to keep a reader from withdrawing. Both farce and nightmare, "Perfect Together" too often falters, Johnson's humor ringing hollow when it needs to ring true. The book is particularly strong in its exploration of what biological parenthood means.

"It's the concept you love," Fran and Charlie's neighbor, Adam Kerner, tells Charlie, who is reeking with sentimental affection. Kerner is an anthropologist whose book, "The Penile Delusion: An Examination of the Wilting Patriarchy," suggests that men's attachment to literal fatherhood is a cultural relic having to do with their ancient mystification about the causes of pregnancy. Though Kerner's ideas are treated satirically, the novel is in fact a surreptitious argument for them. The true parents are most often not the biological parents, yet the characters remain obsessed by literal relationships. blood didn't we all let it divide us up and sow hate?" Fran thinks.

Despite its intriguing ideas and painfully funny moments, the book's internal tensions undermine it. The novel is billed as a comedy, and in parts is written with all the jaunty superficiality the reader of a comedy expects; the story it tells, however, is rather grim. This tragicomic see-sawing often works, but is sometimes alienating: Johnson uses the same tone, for example, when she deals with child abuse as when she sketches the wonderfully appall Ml fit lr fir By Nora Johnson Dutton; 2fi2 pages; $19.95 REVIEWED BY ROZ SPAFFORD I ora Johnson's "Perfect Together" could be read as a I satire on the "Living" sec tion of any major newspaper: Its roller-coaster plot critiques yuppie decorating, surrogate mothers, pop feminist theory, pseudo-Eastern philosophies, astrologers and more. (Johnson has written nine books, including "The World of Henry As the book opens, Charlie and Francesca Fran have the perfect life: the perfect apartment in New York (rent-controlled, of course); the perfect jobs (he is a physicist, she is with the most prestigious law firm in the city); the perfect marriage. uui ao vjiccna iwiicw, auu Charlie and Fran find out, the gods, arrange the downfall of those who have it all.

Fran de-. cides that a baby would complete the perfect picture of their lives, but discovers she is infertile. Charlie gets Ellie, the maid, pregnant accidentally on purpose, it seems Arthur Zeus, Fran's impossible boss, fires hen The rest of the novel consists of a long, shrieking skid from perfection. Charlie convinces Ellie to let him and Fran adopt the baby. A shady guru-type brokers the MOM WtftCr TOGfTMR' ty.

Meanwhile, Fran learns that her mother has misled her on the subject of her own conception, and her quest for her identity parallels that for the identity of Monty. Gay in Music Land America's preference for anything but the truth is best demonstrated by the bizarre life, career and death of Liberace, Who could watch and listen to him and hot know the truth? But he knew the price of honesty and denied until the bitter end that he was gay or that he had AIDS. adoption, but Ellie reneges, and escapes with Monty, the baby. After the guru develops a fetish for her breast milk, Ellie returns Monty to Charlie, who then has a breakdown, doubting his paterni- tual humanity of composers, conductors, singers and other gay artists." Hadleigh points out that "in the flickering firmament of top music stars, only Johnny Mathis has come out," and this he attributes to "the nature of the media, which upholds and mirrors solely heterosexual images, unless stereotypical and off-putting gay ones." Gays in the music world, he says, like their counterparts in the movie industry, must remain closeted to have any chance of mainstream (i.e., financial) success. America's preference for anything but the truth is best demonstrated by the bizarre life, career and death of Liberace.

Hadleigh reminds us that in the early '50s more people watched Liberace's television show than watched "I Love Lucy." And who could watch and listen to Liberace and not know the truth? But Liberace knew the price of honesty and denied until the bitter end that he was gay or that he had AIDS. "The most notable AIDS death in music," Hadleigh writes, "was Liberace, 67 in 1987. What made it even more of a headline-grabber was tfee corpse'? unwillingness to Warren, JCasey, Roz Spafford teaches writing at the University of California at Santa Cruz. range from small-timers like Audio Two to the world's best-selling hard-rock Guns 'N Roses." He cites the Audio Two song "Whatcha Lookin' At?" as an incitement to gay-bashing. Responds Audio Two: "It's not like our whole album is dedicated to beating homosexuals." The names in this book will surprise much of Middle America, but they will hold few surprises for gays and lesbians.

Hadleigh has done a superb job of examining gay lyrics in popular music (in "Jailhouse Rock," after all, 'No. 47 said to No. 3, 'You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see' He also demonstrates that gays, lesbians and bisexuals have had a major voice in modern music. Despite the homophobia that still exists, Hadleigh believes we're moving in the direction of more openness. After all, only a few short years ago, someone of the stature of Leonard Bernstein couldn't have said, as the author quotes him saying in 1988, "Most people do think of me as just another pinko faggot, a bleeding heart, a do-gooder.

But that's what I am." Boh Thomoson on rt Waff of Th THE VINYL CLOSET Gays in the Music World By Boze Hadleigh Los Hombrcs; 237 pages: $9.95 REVIEWED BY BOB THOMPSON On his well-received 1987 book "Conversations With My Elders," Boze Hadleigh quotes Rock Hudson: "Believe me, Boze, America does not want to know" about how many Hollywood stars are gay. After all, there might have been marketing problems with "Pillow Talk" if viewers had known that macho star Hudson preferred men to Doris Day. Despite America's unwillingness to accept the reality of gays in all aspects of the entertainment industry, Hadleigh keeps telling us what we don't want to know. In "The Vinyl Closet," he examines the influence of gay men and lesbians in the world of music. In a foreword written shortly before his death, Leonard Bernstein notes, "From an early age, I was aware that much of the most sublime music ever created derived from the efforts and souls ofhomosexual9.

Our world feels free to enjoy this ageless music time and again, but not tc acknowledge even the simnle mu on "Grease," is quoted here as saying: "I always saw Liberace as an embarrassment to gays. That was an opinion. What I can't forgive is how he treated his private life as so shameful that even in death he wanted it secret. He could have done so much good, telling the world with dignity that yes, he had AIDS, and so do thousands of good, creative, successful people. Instead, he carried on like a cowardly fruit, right into the grave." "The Vinyl Closet" makes no pretense to be a catalog of gays in music, nor as Hadleigh says, "A Who's Who or Who Had Who." Rather it is an anecdotal, almost conversational, recounting of the who've had an impact on non-classical music.

For instance, Noel Coward on, Noel Coward: "Of course my plays will survive. Musically, a handful of songs may survive, and I shall be remembered for my personality and for living life to its fullest" Once, when asked to perform the song "There Are Fairies at the Bottom of My Garden," Coward responded, "I should love to perform that, but I don't dare. It might come out There Are Fairies in the Garden of My Hadleigh believes that in this age of "homophobia is be- 'oomine more.vocal and visible In Uvet oLgav.mejuanoUesM.