Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale

Novelist and English professor Chuck Kinder was the inspiration for the blocked Grady Tripp in Michael Chabon’s ”Wonder Boys” — Michael Douglas played the charming, rumpled character in the film version — and ”Honeymooners,” in Tripp-like fashion, was 25 years in the making. Novelist Ralph Crawford boozes and womanizes his way through San Francisco’s ’70s literary scene with drinking buddy and insecure rival Jim Stark, a friend from Stanford’s writing program. Unfortunately, as the two betray their wives and each other, the rambling, druggy, bed-swapping plot leaves little room for character development. And Kinder’s novel feels like an artifact of a time when such sexual high jinks were really risque.