Novel revisits real-life murder of gay couple in 1980 ‘Up With the Sun’ a story of ambition, lusts, obsessions

By KATHI WOLFE

If you’re in your right mind, you’d stop reading a novel whose protagonist is as appealing as a snake oil salesman without the charm. Even if he’s gay, murdered, and the star of several 1950s stage and movie musicals. Unless the book is “Up With the Sun,” the newest novel from acclaimed author Thomas Mallon.

Mallon, 71, is renowned for writing enthralling historical fiction. Too often, such novels are like high school history classes (taught by snooze-inducing teachers). They’re worthy. But you just want to eat your kale and get to dessert.

Thankfully, this isn’t so with “Up With the Sun.” The novel’s story is based on the real-life gay actor Dick Kallman, born in 1933 and murdered, along with his partner Steven, in 1980.

Kallman appeared on Broadway in 1951 in the musical “Seventeen.” In 1965-1966, he starred in the TV sitcom “Hank.” But though he replaced the lead in the Broadway show “Half a Sixpence,” and was a guest star on “Batman,” “Medical Center,” and a few other TV shows, Kallman never became a big showbiz success. By the 1970s, he’d left show business to work in fashion and as an art and antique dealer.

Much of “Up With the Sun” is about Kallman’s career in the second or even third tier of showbiz. It is a story of Kallman’s ambitions, yearnings, and lusts and obsessions: for success in show business, fame, money and Kenneth Nelson, who stars in “Seventeen.” Nelson, who is put off by Kallman’s personality, rejects his overtures.

Kallman is one of the creepiest characters ever brought to the page. He is so phony, such a social climber, that he’s described as being “aggressively ingratiating.”

When he appears in a show with Dyan Cannon, Kallman is ticked off with her. He feels she’s upstaging him. That happens sometimes, you think. Until Kallman, in his pique, smashes Cannon’s finger. You can’t agree more when Cannon tells Kallman, “you’re a sick bastard!”

The other protagonist in “Up With the Sun” is Matt Liannetto, a pianist who worked with Kallman in “Seventeen.”

In alternating chapters, Matt narrates the novel. Matt is as sweet and endearing as Kallman is off-putting and slimy. He isn’t Kallman’s BFF (who would be?). But his path has crossed with Kallman’s over the years. He’s over at Kallman’s apartment the night that Kallman and Steven are killed.

The police turn to him for help in identifying the suspects. During the investigation, Matt and Devin Arroyo, a charming police assistant years younger than him, fall in love.

Mallon, who is gay and lives in Washington, D.C., is the author of 11 novels, including “Henry and Clara,” “Dewey Defeats Truman,” “Fellow Travelers,” “Watergate,” and “Landfall.”

In his fiction, Mallon makes history as entertaining as a bodice-ripper, intriguing as a mystery and by turns, as comic and/or poignant as the best literary fiction set in the present.

In “Up With the Sun,” Mallon immerses you into the smells, tastes, sights, sounds, language, and characters (real-life and fictional) of the 1950s through 1981. Through his authorial sleight of hand, you come to care about not only kindhearted Matt and Devin, but self-serving Kallman.

Much has been written in non-fiction and fiction about the time periods and real-life celebs featured in “Up With the Sun.” Yet, Mallon makes this familiar material – from Judy Garland’s concert at Carnegie Hall to the beginning of the AIDS crisis – seem new.

‘Up With the Sun’

By Thomas

“All my life I’ve loved the past as a place that can keep you safe from the present,” Matt says, “… a place that your imagination can make as pretty as the two-dimensional flats of the Seventeen sets.”

Mallon’s writing is as beautiful as the most gorgeous stage sets, yet there’s nothing safe or emptily nostalgic about his rendering of the past.

The police procedural aspects of the novel — identifying the suspects, the trial, etc. — are not as interesting as Mallon’s depiction of the protagonists, their quirks, supporting characters and period details. But this is a minor quibble.

Reading “Up With the Sun” is like eating potato chips. Once you start, you won’t be able to stop.

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