I follow an autograph hound

The Autograph Man**1/2
by Zadie Smith

Let me say at the outset that I am a big fan of Zadie Smith's novels, "On Beauty" and "White Teeth," and I hope she has a long and productive writing career. She writes with humor, compassion, and wit about the melting pot that is cosmopolitan London and how cultures and generations collide.

So, with regret, I have to say that "The Autograph Man" is overwritten and tiresomely cryptic. And no wonder; it takes as its structure the Kabbalah of mystic Judaism with dollops of Buddhism and Roman Catholicism on the side. In her other novels, Smith is able to make a tasty casserole out of such varying ingredients, but they don't work here, at least not to a white, Catholic American like me.

The main story idea--an Anglo-Chinese Jewish boy, Alex-Li Tandem, tries to make a living out of selling autographs, drinks too much, and nearly alienates everyone he knows--is pretty good. So is his quest for the Holy Grail of autographs, the signature of reclusive film star Kitty Alexander. And his friends are interesting incarnations from the world of the autograph biz and London Jewry.

But there is way too much drinking. In one scene, Alex tries to "drink the alphabet" at the urging of an antisemitic Irishman, starting with a shot of absinthe and making it about as far as rum, and then passes out. In truth, Alex had already had five shots of whiskey and was coming off jet lag on an empty stomach, and would have been utterly dead had this happened in real life.

There are also kabbalistic charts, strange little cartoons, and cryptic chapter headings that fail to gel. Alex's life is also hopelessly complicated by a girlfriend he's been stringing along for 10 years (her patience strains credulity), as well as his conflicted identity as a Jew symbolized by his inexplicable reluctance to say Kaddish for his father.

I kept thinking this book, pared down to one or two plots and divested of the ersatz mysticism, would make a great movie.