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Book Review
Comedian Robert Klein Probes His Norwood Roots

By BARBARA ELIASSON

If you grew up in our neighborhood in the 1950s and ‘60s, you’ll love Robert Klein’s new book, “The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue.” But even if you don’t remember egg creams, stickball, Spaldeens, or hanging out on Mosholu Parkway, you’ll enjoy Klein’s reminiscences. (The subtitle of the book is “A Child of the Fifties Looks Back.” It could just as easily be called “A Child of the Bronx…”). The book is more than a name-dropping celebrity memoir; it’s the story of how a life is shaped by family, environment, experiences and drive.

In his Afterword, the actor-comedian tells us that he has not tried to write a “comprehensive” autobiography; instead, he marks his boundaries: what happened to him between the ages of 9 and 25, including only those “events that stand out in his memory, that have a chronology all their own.”

Like most of us, Klein’s early years were centered around his family, his apartment, and his neighborhood. The first three chapters introduce us, not just to Klein’s parents (their cautious refrains, we’re told, were “Be careful, be careful … that can take your eye out… you can lose a leg doing that … ”), but to his neighborhood — our neighborhood. For those of us who have lived for years in Norwood, his points of reference are familiar; for everyone else, he includes a map of the area. Here he identifies the locations of some of those places and “events that stand out” — 3525 Decatur Ave., his home; the Woodlawn Cemetery wall, where stickball boxes were drawn; PS 94, where Klein had a confrontation with a bullying teacher; DeWitt Clinton, his high school; Williamsbridge Oval, where he was “jumped by Ace McVay.”

Much of the charm in his story lies in Klein’s narrative voice; it carries us through the years into his young manhood. With it he expresses a complicated dual vision of the experiences he describes: we are plunged into the past with an immediacy that makes us feel every disappointment, every humiliation, and yet we also hear the voice of the mature adult Klein is now. And that adult narrator is, in turn, amused, appalled, judging, forgiving and, often, rueful.

He’s not afraid to show himself in a poor light. In college, he longs to be invited to join a fraternity on campus. He’s desperate to fit in even though it’s an open secret that most of the fraternities don’t accept blacks or Jews. Rejected at first, he’s coached by a friend and eventually succeeds, he says, “by being the biggest brown-nosing ass kisser I could be.”

But he could also be a “Boy Hero,” Klein’s biting take on an incident that happened the summer before he started college. He has a job as a lifeguard at a “small, reasonably dumpy resort.” It’s August and the word is out — a bratty kid has checked into the hotel with his parents. After tormenting everyone — bellhops, guests, other children — he turns his sights on Klein. Finally, in the middle of playing tricks on the young lifeguard, the kid disappears in eight feet of water. Klein jumps in and pulls him out. Dramatic rescue! The next day the father gives Klein a tip of five dollars. Klein’s comment: “Five dollars to save his life? I could have gotten fifteen from the bellhops to let him drown.”

Klein has the novelist’s talent for sketching a character in one or two sentences. A villain in another mini-narrative is described as he clicks open his switchblade: “The Panamanian smiled, revealing ugly gold teeth barely hanging on to rotten bone and diseased gums.” Not exactly a toothpaste ad. He can describe non-villainous characters as well. Here’s a doctor: he was “a stooped, elderly man with wire spectacles drooping down his nose and shabby suspenders holding up his pants.”

Klein, of course, can be extremely funny. But since he’s a well-known comedian, he may think we expect him to be funny at all times. Occasionally, he tries too hard; the result is clumsy and strained. His opening pages – Pre-Preface, Preface and Post-Preface – are examples. (My advice: Skip the multiple prefaces; read the Afterword instead.)

In the Afterword, Klein sums up what he’s tried to do in the book and gives us reasons for choosing specific episodes: “Each of them underlines the basic influences in my youth, among them; humor, love, sex, music, ethicalness, and fear.”

And Decatur Avenue.

Barbara Eliasson, a Norwood resident and former college teacher, grew up in the neighborhood. “The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue,” 384 pp. was published by Touchstone Books in June.

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