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SON OF ROSEMARY
by Ira Levin
(Dutton, 255 pages, hc, $22.95, 1997)

Somebody, anybody - bring me the head of Ira Levin.

In the Acknowledgments to this Rosemary's Baby sequel, Levin thanks Alan Ladd Jr. and presumably another movie producer "for getting me off the couch and over to the computer." Indicating a strong likelihood that once again - as with two of 1997's other worst novels, Meg and A Dry Spell - a prior film deal cinched a book contract, with last-priority status accorded to publishing a readable novel. At least I'll give the authors of those other two this much: They tried. However ineptly, they tried. Son Of Rosemary - padded out with large type, huge margins, and numerous blank pages - reads as if its celebrated author not only never budged from the couch, but phoned it in during commercials.

Watching Levin slog through this meager sham reminded me of the sad spectacle that Muhammad Ali has become: an occasional dim glimmer of what once was great, but otherwise a slow and palsied shadow of his former self. But Ali has Parkinson's Disease. Levin's excuse is anyone's guess. Gone is the twisty, clockwork-tight plotting of A Kiss Before Dying and his play Deathtrap. Gone is the jabbing social satire of The Stepford Wives. Gone is the conspiratorial fervor of The Boys From Brazil.

In an attempt to milk the cash cow of millennial anxiety, Levin has Rosemary - the unwitting mother of Satan's son back in the mid-1960s, you will recall - rousing from a 27-year coma in November 1999. Conveniently, she's so free of physical debilitation and psychological maladjustment that she's soon jogging and ballroom dancing. But that doesn't matter.

The world into which she awakens is smitten with her only begotten son, Andy, a charismatic, ecumenical messiah who has managed to all but instill world peace, universal brotherhood, and low interest rates. How he has accomplished all this, aside from running a foundation staffed by undifferentiated yuppies mouthing trite platitudes, is never explained. But that doesn't matter.

Rosemary is reunited with Andy, and understandably relieved by his declaration that he's worked hard not to be his father's son, and to let his human goodness flow instead. Levin makes a half-hearted effort at generating suspense by implying that some of wicked old Dad may still be slithering around inside, and hinting at a biochemical armageddon linked to Andy's New Year's Eve plan for everyone in the world to light a special candle furnished for the occasion. Levin meanders into edgier territory with some Oedipal flirtation between mother and son, but this goes nowhere, and finally trots out the Devil himself at the finale, so dapper and quaint he belongs on a can of Underwood ham. But none of this matters either.

And why not? Because five pages from the end, the entire novel and its entire predecessor are revealed to be merely a bad dream. How Rosemary prognosticates, in the mid-1960s, such 1990s conveniences as personal computers and voice mail isn't explained either, needless to say. But that hardly matters when a once-great author exhibits such lazy disdain for his own work and readers that he stoops to clichés so hoary they would earn any story a swift rejection from the tiniest small press zine.

Well, I have a dream, too. The next time Ira Levin feels like getting up off the couch, there's Muhammad Ali, ready to punch him back down again. As many times as it takes. With extreme prejudice.