Meet Shulman.

 

Shulman is a middle-aged husband and father whose kids have all become adults, and whose wife has been growing more distant with age.  He owns an independent stationery store that has been teetering close to bankruptcy due to his faulty business sense and overgenerous nature.  He has struggled with his weight for most of his life, losing and gaining the same few pounds that by now (he jokes), if added together, would equal a whole other Shulman.

 

In short, Shulman is ready for a mid-life crisis.

 

One day, after seeing a poster at Ben & Jerry’s, the 250-lb. Shulman decides that he’ll run the New York City marathon, with help from an organization that will train him while he raises money for AIDS research.  It’s around this time that he becomes aware that the “other Shulman” business isn’t just a joke – there actually is another Shulman out there, one who has made all the right decisions in life and who is much more aggressive and confident than Shulman.  This doppelganger has set out to destroy Shulman’s business, his family, and Shulman himself.

 

The Other Shulman, by original SNL writer Alan Zweibel, is a largely funny story that also strives to be deep.  Zweibel has done a good job of establishing Shulman as an Everyman who prefers to go with the flow, and generally wants nothing more than to be liked.  As Shulman runs the marathon, he thinks back to what brought him there: the early Sunday morning training sessions; his troubled relationships with his friends and family, who tend to either help him or hurt him; and even his past experiences within the different boroughs of New York.  Most of it is very funny – it seems almost sitcom-ish at times – yet it’s also intermixed with the warm melancholy of a man looking back on his life.  As Shulman runs, he asks himself lots of questions about his life so far, and what his life will still bring.

 

The trouble with this book comes with the answers to some of those questions.  Since they mostly come near the end, I won’t give away any specific details.  I will say that after about 230 pages of an enjoyable story, Zweibel starts to lecture, with the “message” jumping right at you off the page.  Granted, we discover it right as Shulman learns it, but the delivery could be subtler.  Instead of letting his “message” come out organically (or even skipping the “message” and finishing a good story), Zweibel spells it out for us.

 

While the answers that are given aren’t fully satisfying, there are important matters that are left unresolved.  For instance, we never learn the truth behind the Other Shulman – he’s not a figure of Original Shulman’s imagination, as other people interact with him, but at some point, he simply ceases to exist.  We also don’t get a satisfying resolution to Shulman’s relationship woes.  For much of the novel, Shulman develops a relationship with Maria, an attractive fellow marathon runner, while his wife doesn’t remain faithful to their marriage.  This is all swept under the rug in the closing chapter, a Spielberg-ish conclusion that even includes the movie cliché that a large crowd scene makes for a happy ending.  I suspect that these problems are partially due to the fact that Zweibel tried to stuff too much into his 26.2 chapters, especially towards the end.  If he wanted to include all that he did, he should have either given up his marathon gimmick (having the same number of chapters as miles in a marathon) or included a “cool down” chapter to sufficiently wrap things up. 

 

In all, The Other Shulman is a pretty good book.  Don’t get me wrong – it’s funny, it’s somewhat compelling, and it’s actually making me consider running a marathon (someday).  Unfortunately, like an overweight marathon runner, it loses steam towards the end.