Zoomar

by Ernie Kovacs

Genres: Humor, Fiction

348 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1957

Reviews

[Bob Schnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ernie Kovacs is best known for his pioneering and influential television shows. He also wrote "Zoomar!" The book is a fictional tale of the business of television and advertising. It is comic, dramatic and occasionally preachy. It is also "of its time" which you can translate to mean a bit dated in terms of feminism, technology, smoking, drinking and business practices. It really could have been an inspiration for the TV show "Mad Men."

I wanted to like the book more than I did. Being a Kovacs fan, I was hoping for something a bit wackier and in line with his surrealist sense of humor. Instead I got the sense that he wanted it to be the basis for a screenplay to be directed by Billy Wilder with the cast and sense of dramedy of "The Apartment." Although it came 20 years later, there's a bit of Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" in there as well. Recommended for fans of Kovacs and Don Draper.

[Catharine · Rating 5 out of 5]

For more than 30 years, this has been one of my favorites. I never fail to laugh when I think of Miss Wipeola and company. Kovacs was a genius who has often been imitated but never surpassed. Would that he had lived longer . . . Zoomar would have been the first of many tales and TV-land would have been better for his perspective and talent. Great literature? Certainly not. But wonderfully funny and never to be forgotten.

[Glyven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kovacs's absurdist experimentation in the television medium does not carry over into his novel writing. Instead, we get a straightforward but cynical satire, a cleverly written and detailed look at a bygone era of television populated by interesting (if not especially likable) characters.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even if you're already in the camp that thinks that Ernie Kovacs was a genius, you'll be impressed with his only novel, Zoomar. If you dig late 50s, early 60s comedy, this book is a must. It's unfortunate that it's been out of print for so many years.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just recently started to explore the works of Ernie Kovacs, and someone mentioned to me that he wrote a book. The humor in this novel does have Kovacs's voice, but I think it doesn't quite work as well on the printed page. As for the book itself, it's a deeply cynical portrayal of the television industry -- to the point where it started to go beyond amusing.

The book tells the story of an ad executive who seemingly falls into success, and ends up abruptly fired. He ends up in the television industry, where he discovers that all of the politics, credit-grabbing, and incompetence being rewarded are even more present that in his previous career. By the end of the novel, he's made his way up toward the top, and seen just how messy it is at all levels.

Two things stand out to me. First, by the end up the book, the central character thinks to himself how he has a successful career, and a successful family life. By this point, he's done many of the immoral things he's seen other people do: sleep with his secretary, blackmail other execs, take over the job of his former boss (the one that originally gave him a chance in the industry, just after he had been fired). Going home to tell his wife about a promotion, he finds a used condom -- and instantly becomes wracked with grief, sad that his suspicions seem to have been confirmed. Then he hears his wife, who is unaware of what he's seen: as she starts to tell him about her day, she mentions that she's fired the maid because she caught her sleeping with the gardener. As the novel ends, we're forced to think about the central character's position: does he believe his wife? Stay suspicious? Even if he does believe her, he's just proven to himself that his successful marriage is actually teetering on a weak foundation, ready to be torn down in an instant. His successful career, too, is built not on a lifetime of television experience, but only because he's had good luck and been able to subvert people before they could sabotage him. While the tone of the book is generally humorous as it talk about the TV industry, by the end it's become cynical to the point of being nasty.

The second thing I wanted to talk about: the novel doesn't portray people in the industry as generally all that good, but it really stuck out to me just how much casual misogyny and homophobia there was. Thinking about it, there wasn't really that much racism, but that's probably because pretty much all the characters in the book were white. It almost seemed like that portrayal was supposed to give the characters a little bit of a rough edge, but it really just made me think of how miserable all of the characters really were.

I did actually enjoy reading the book, I'm just not sure how much more of it I could have taken.

[Michael Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the only novel of Ernie Kovacs, the peculiar genius of 1950s television comedy, and it reads like a first novel...at least at first. One can see Kovacs testing the prose waters with a little too much attention paid to trying to impress the reader, and a few too many self-references. But once the book hits its stride about a quarter of the way through it turns into an amazingly self-assured novel. "Zoomar" (which is the name of a TV camera lens) tells the story of Tom Moore, a New York advertising hotshot who becomes a television executive and develops an unlikely vehicle for sponsor Wipe-Ola, which despite the bathroom implication is shoe polish. From there he fairly well shoots up the ladder, if not exactly eating the other dogs on the way up, at least deviously nipping at them. While there are plenty of funny moments and references in this book (and countless Wipe-Ola jokes) it is not a farce. The characters are all pretty grounded in reality, particularly the protagonist, whose character path from uncertain hopeful to calculating top dog is well charted. It might not even be that much of a satire, since one begins to suspect that Kovacs was simply recording his experiences, with only slight exaggeration. There is a fair amount of sex, which seems to have been one of its selling-points, judging from the blurbs. More than a half-century after his death Kovacs remains an intriguing character. His roles in films such as "Our Man in Havana" revealed him to be a better actor than the average comedian, just as "Zoomar" reveals him to be a better-than-expected novelist. It is a tragedy that Kovacs died so young.