FLYING INTO LOVE

There's hardly a serious theme that Thomas (Summit, 1988; Lying Together, 1990, etc.) can't make hackwork out of— psychoanalysis, Russian literature, and now the Kennedy assassination. Usually the historical/pornographic/metafictional pastiches Thomas cooks up are just this side of smarmy—but with a tabloid-Englishman's zest, he's crossed sides here, and how. Everything from the cutesy title (Love Field was Dallas's only airport at the time) to wholesale buying-in to the Oliver Stone/Mark Lane crowd of conspiracy connoisseurs to vignettes of how the little people of Dallas felt on the terrible day to Jackie's inner thoughts to Jack's goatish sharing of Marilyn with Bobby—it's all given a spin in this cheap blender of a book. In prose so pedestrian that it ought to have a crosswalk (``Well, tonight he would be there! He would be in a safe-house and Castro would come personally to shake his hand! He shivered; he could still scarcely believe it. In a few hours he would be famous....''), Thomas cheapens all he touches under the protection of collage and re-association. Offensive, simple-minded, and only for fans of gross cartoon.