"The Grand Complication" by Allen Kurzweil

But if Alexander can be legitimately vexed by his co-workers, when it comes to his home life, Nic has griping rights. After an exceedingly bookish courtship conducted largely through the exchange of library call slips -- and a proposal effected when Nic handed him a slip requesting "Hints on Husband Catching, or a Manual for Marriageable Misses" and he responded by flashing "I DO! I DO! I DO!" on the library's indicator board (prompting a reprimand from his boss for "violation No. 12" or "Percussive Laudation") -- Alexander finds himself impotent. Nic first tries to resurrect his passion by giving him a pop-up version of the Kama Sutra and a topographical map of her naked body and then by lounging around their apartment in a black spandex catsuit with bulls-eyes chalked over her erogenous zones, but to no avail. She blames in part his obsession with writing things down in a "girdled" notebook attached, like the prayer books of medieval monks, by a strap to his clothes.

Bored at work and berated at home, Alexander jumps at the chance to help Jesson. The two men (and, clearly, their creator) share a fascination with collecting, secret compartments and old books. In Jesson's sequestered Upper East Side townhouse, where he retreats from such modern atrocities as ballpoint pens, computers and air travel, Alexander discovers all kinds of marvelous and antique objects, most replete with hidden compartments and all described in loving detail. Furthermore, the search for the watch proves to be an exhilarating exercise for Alexander's research skills. But Nic mistrusts Jesson, and soon Alexander finds cause to doubt his employer's honesty, too.

Packed as it is with historical esoterica (Kurzweil is famed for the amount of research he did for "A Case of Curiosities"), inside jokes and plays on words, "The Grand Complication" is a feast for a particular kind of reader -- the sort who delights in ferreting out hidden meanings and significant correspondences. The title isn't, however, so fabulous a pun as that of Kurzweil's previous novel, which pegged the book as both about a cabinet of oddities and a study of several types of inquisitiveness. "The Grand Complication" is not, when you get right down to it, really so complicated. For all his love of devices, Kurzweil can't seem to concoct what must be the most blatantly mechanical type of story line: a solid mystery plot. And often, his love of the elaborate conceit trumps psychological common sense. Jesson's ulterior motives strain credulity, and then there's that bit with the catsuit: it's clever, but not actually very sexy. Nic seems like the sort who'd know she'd have better luck with a good old-fashioned black, miniskirted maid's outfit. (She is French, after all.)

Furthermore, while the underlying message of "The Grand Complication" is that a passion for catalogs and other compartments can stifle the spontaneous, earthy side of life, it's really a book that foments that passion. Like "A Case of Curiosities," it's for people who like novels that half-try to be encyclopedias, lists or games. I confess to my own weakness for such romps, but they are hard to pull off, as the intermittently successful fiction of Umberto Eco demonstrates. While I suspect that librarians will fall in love with "The Grand Complication" (it is a paean to the joys of research), it -- unlike "The Case of Curiosities" -- lacks the expansive feel and intriguing factoids of everyday 18th century life to compensate for the faintness of its heartbeat. Like the automaton built by the hero of Kurzweil's earlier book, it doesn't strike quite the right delicate balance between the human and the machine.

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