Koch Tease: on Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style by Paul Rudnick

Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style
By Paul Rudnick
Simon and Schuster/Atria Books, 2023

 On February 13, 2020, The New York Times reported the death of Frederick Koch, 86, a wealthy bachelor known for collecting fine art, restoring historic upscale properties, and shoveling cash to ballet and opera companies. His demise might not otherwise have been given space but for his family: The Koch dynasty is widely known for its Wichita-based corporation, the second-largest privately held company in the United States. Two of its four scions (Frederick was the eldest) have carved out their own debate-worthy reputations. Charles and David (the latter now also deceased) have been widely lionized for their cultural philanthropy and widely reviled for their support of reactionary causes and candidates.

The Times’ obit paints a portrait of a reclusive individual who nonetheless left a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a gilded closet door: someone who in his youth disliked athletics and was shamed by his father for being insufficiently tough; who was indifferent to the family business but devoted to singing and poetry; who used his immense wealth to acquire historic homes (a castle once owned by Archduke Franz Ferdinand, anyone?) and pricey gewgaws—private documents from Marcel Proust and Noel Coward, not to mention Marie Antoinette’s canopied bed. The obit also notes Koch’s complicated relations with his family—lawsuits, inheritance disputes, lengthy and bitter estrangements.

Juicy stuff for a novel, an idea not lost on Paul Rudnick, who in a recent radio interview said he has harbored a fascination with wealthy and conservative families who often count one or more gay members among the clan, and the impact of that child on family dynamics. He also name-checked Koch as having hit on men Rudnick knew.

The Koch family is not mentioned by name in Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, but the parallels are unmistakable. The novel pairs a fictionalized Koch with a semi-fictionalized Rudnick—here known as Nate Reminger—to create a sweet-and-sour romantic comedy that allows the writer to present his trademark arsenal of social satire, buoyant humor, and gay pride.

Rudnick has been writing funny for four decades, and never let a high-concept idea to go to waste. See his screenplay for In and Out, where a small-town high school teacher is outed on national television; his previous novel, Playing the Palace, in which a party planner from New Jersey meets and falls in love with a crown prince of England; and his off-Broadway hit, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, where the Garden of Eden is populated with partners Adam and Steve and the lesbians Jane and Mabel.

Unlike his generational gay peer David Sedaris (they were born almost exactly one year apart), Rudnick’s books have never cracked the bestseller lists. Whereas Sedaris mines family history for comedy and pathos—and is a tireless live performer, hosting marathon book signings for his fans—Rudnick prefers a quieter profile a, although millions know his work through films like Sister Act, Addams Family Values, and many uncredited screenplay repair jobs.

His first theatrical venture was the 1982 off-Broadway Poor Little Lambs, drawn from his experiences as a Yale undergrad. It was a charming effort that can be credited for providing an early platform for a young Kevin Bacon (for which, gratitude). Novels that followed that decade, Social Disease and I’ll Take It, tapped into Rudnick’s gimlet-eyed satiric skills, targeting the New York club scene and New Jersey shopaholics. A Broadway play (I Hate Hamlet) in 1991 drew favorable reviews, but an onstage kerfuffle between the lead actors (one of whom was the celebrated Nicol Williamson) led to damaging headlines and a mere 88-performance run.

All of these efforts were undeniably hilarious, but the works were largely gay-adjacent. It was only when he embraced his proud gay self for creative inspiration that he found his true voice. The 1993 off-Broadway Jeffrey did the unthinkable—finding comedy in the AIDS crisis—and a time when most of the works in the genre were understandably solemn and angry.  Rudnick’s farcical take on celibacy, safe sex, and religious hypocrisy hit a sweet spot just when the community most needed to laugh. Reactions were joyous—comparisons to Wilde and Joe Orton were tossed his way—and Frank Rich of The New York Times named it “the funniest play of this season, and maybe last season too.” “Instead of writing about the bleak absurdity of meaningless death,” Rich went on, Rudnick “focuses on the far more manic, at times bizarre festivities of those that survive.”

The Jeffrey film that followed made less of an impact, and his subsequent plays were mostly short-lived, yet still offered bountiful laughs, not to mention frequent frontal nudity (for which again, gratitude).

Perhaps his greatest achievements of the era were his movie reviews written as Libby Gelman-Waxner for Premiere and Entertainment Weekly. “Libby” was/is an Upper East Side mother-of-two who works an assistant buyer in juniors’ activewear and is married to Josh, a successful orthodontist. Movie reviewing is her side hustle, and while her opinions are the most fetching when she wanders off to the nether regions of her own head and privileged life, she often lands with accidental critical acumen on many a film’s vulnerabilities. Here she is on The Last Emperor:

I never really trusted this Bertolucci person [see Last Tango in Paris]. If my Josh came to bed with a stick of margarine, I’d just say, Honey, it’s still cholesterol, don’t risk it. But this time Bernardo has made a fabulous work of cinematic achievement. He was allowed to film inside the Forbidden City, and has given us an in-depth look at the throw pillows and dining areas of Imperial China.

Or on The Prince of Tides:

[Barbra Streisand] plays Manhattan’s richest, most stunning, most irresponsible shrink; she spends the whole movie analyzing Nick Nolte, though Nick’s sister is her actual patient . . . Barbra’s only spontaneous moment . . . comes when Nick tosses her a football and she screams, “My nails!” 

While most cagy readers were able to suss out Rudnick as Libby’s puppet master, she received fan mail and requests for personal appearances from the unenlightened. Her collected works (If You Ask Me—the sign-off phrase for each of her reviews) is a minor masterpiece, well worth a search, even if most readers may need a deep-dive glossary to identify such long-ago celebrities as Leeza Gibbons, Ken Wahl, and Amy Fisher. (In happy recent news, Rudnick has offered occasional Instagram space to Libby; time has not dimmed her critical chops, nor her delicious self-absorption.)

Rudnick has labeled Farrell Covington a “comic epic.” The narrator, Nate, is a timid nebbish from Piscataway, NJ, who as a Yale undergrad in 1973 meets fellow student Covington. (Rudnick is a Yale grad from Piscataway.) He is dazzled from first glance:

Farrell wasn’t simply my cultural opposite, a blinding sun god to counter my pale, Jewish, brown-haired, generous-nosed eagerness. He was a genetic accident, a green-eyed, six-foot-three-inch broad-shouldered gift … a dangerously friendly oil portrait of some Venetian prince. 

Covington, shortly after their meeting, bestows on Nate his first kiss and then takes him to bed. The sex that follows “wasn’t memorable” says Nate, but overcoming his Jewish guilt gives him a sweet surge of victory: “I was verifying that I was seriously, sweatily, joyously, slurpingly gay.”

The rest of their multi-decade relationship offers a panoramic overview of gay history. Rudnick lets no trend pass by or milestone go unturned, from ACT-UP, sex clubs, gay bashing, Studio 54, same-sex marriage, and even such totemic icons as the palatial Hollywood home shared by publicly straight movie idols Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. (Covington purchases it for Nate. Of course.)

While Covington’s conservative Midwestern family succeeds in employing its bottomless coffers and to break up the pair—at first dramatically so—Nate uses their years apart to hone his writing skills and firm up his pecs. Like Rudnick, he stumbles at his first attempts at playwriting, until he is urged by his agent to write what he knows. (Enter Jeffrey, here disguised as I Dare You.)

The succeeding chapters allow Rudnick to revisit his own showbiz adventures on both coasts, with all of their attendant frustrations, hypocrisies, and homophobia. His saga of writing Habit Forming (aka Sister Act) while fighting the uphill battle of studio idiocy and prejudice lends the book many of its most vivid pages.

It’s in these “backstage” tales that we find thinly disguised versions of film and theater celebrities, from a flamboyant costume designer and aggressively abusive producer to a vain, aging actress and a reclusive nun. (If the name Dolores Hart makes your trivia-loving heart flutter, this is the book for you.) It’s true that Rudnick is prone to trafficking in gay male stereotypes: no diva goes unworshipped, no fashion choice unjudged, no acidic remark unspoken, no hunk uncruised. And Covington, as seen through Nate’s eyes, remains more a fantasy archetype than a character.

Yet Rudnick in full flower is unparalleled:

Cruising is why gay bars came into being. These men had gathered to inspect one another, like picky housewives in the produce aisle, and make an educated or hazardously last-call selection. It lent the place a pulsingly carnal vibe, as if the air were equal parts stale cigarette smoke, generously applied cologne, sweat from the crush of bodies, loneliness from the lack of anything beyond basic conversation, and seething desire. 

He was a cross between a pixilated headmaster and a capering Roman emperor passing hors d’oeuvres at a spur-of-the-moment Colosseum orgy.

Gray hair is the beige of old age.

In New Jersey, beauty is not leaving food on your chin.

Perhaps in the book Rudnick is offering Koch a life he might have enjoyed—open, proud, more generous to worthy social causes and to those in need, and less indulgent to his own whims, and with his own Nate by his side—had family prejudice not kept him rigidly closeted.

Post-Stonewall gay history has had many witnesses; the library of worthy chronicles is formidable. Rudnick’s novel, by far his most accomplished and deeply felt, is a welcome addition, for its effervescence and bold colors. There is always room for a seriously, sweatily, joyously, slurpingly gay novel. Especially today, if you ask me.

Michael Adams is a writer and editor living in New York City. He holds a PhD from Northwestern University in Performance Studies. His previous review was on Thomas Mallon.