Hot to Trot

by John Lahr

TV executive George Mellish has separated from his wife and seems determined to live it up in the lonely grandeur of his new penthouse flat, yet he finds himself still obsessed by his wife, to the point of spying on her from a treehouse. A comic novel from the author of Joe Orton's biography.

241 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

John Lahr is the senior drama critic of The New Yorker, where he has written about theatre and popular culture since 1992. Among his eighteen books are Notes on a Cowardly Lion: The Biography of Bert Lahr and Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton, which was made into a film.

He has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Lahr, whose stage adaptations have been performed around the world, received a Tony Award for co-writing Elaine Stritch at Liberty.

He divides his time between London and New York.

Reviews

[Benedict Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite a nasty book in many ways. Definitely a product of it's time, where sexism was the norm and the sexual revolution was largely expected to be mostly for the benefit of men. But this book definitely does some interesting structural things in its exploration of divorce told entirely from the man's point of view. That said, I struggled to get through it and I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone, except as an historical artifact.

[Dark-Draco · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of George Mellish, a TV executive who has recently split up from his wife. Determined to live the life of a rich playboy, he only really gets as far as buying the car. Obsessed with his ex-wife, he takes to watching her from the treehouse and thinks about kidnapping the kids.

Mildly amusing, although the writing style and the way it jumped about got a bit annoying after a while.

[Carol Storm · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very strange novel, a satire that isn't funny and a portrait of divorce and heartbreak that just doesn't ring true. George Mellish is the son of an old time Jewish movie mogul, someone like Jack Warner. George is sent to the best prep schools (in the Fifties and Sixties) and tries to see himself as a WASP gentleman, a scholar athlete, a sportsman, etc. He's kind of like Don Draper, or Jay Gatsby. But he lacks all personal magnetism. Girls cheat on him, his buddies laugh at him, and he rebels in petty ways like urinating in a camp counselor's office. But he doesn't change.

As part of his aspirations to gentrify himself, George goes to Oxford in the early sixties, where he meets Irene Trewin, the shrill, spoiled, deeply neurotic and unhappy daughter of a cold and distant English lord. George falls madly in love with Irene, woos her against all odds, and takes her back to suburban Connecticut, where he becomes a successful young television executive.

This should be the happy ending, but as the Sixties spin out of control George's life falls apart as well. His wife Irene turns out to be a needy, whiny, childlike creature who refuses to honor George's achievements and has no interest in either starting a career or being a conventional wife and mother. She cheats on him, first with a wealthy WASP neighbor and later with a sexy rock star who is featured in one of George's hit television shows. The tone of all this is meant to be satirical, yet it's never funny, and the cheap shots at rock and roll stars are remarkably childish. There's no substantive discussions of feminism, Civil Rights, or the Vietnam War, just a lot of whining from George about the way his "betters" don't behave better.

There's no way to say this nicely, but the failure of this book is simply the basic inability of John Lahr to either create believable characters you can care about or come up with genuinely witty satire. These characters are always in pain, but you don't feel it. Lahr holds all of them up to ridicule, yet nothing they do is really all that funny.

Guess he should have just stuck to being a theater critic.