Facing a midlife crisis, prompted by a deteriorating business and a marriage headed south, a man known as Shulman, "who used gym shorts only as pajama bottoms," decides to enter the New York Marathon.

It's for the challenge, he tells his pretty wife - "plus I read somewhere that the greatest gift a man can give to his family is to get in shape."

Despite his aversion to running, the softhearted and chubby Shulman joins Coach Jeffrey and a group of Sunday morning runners to prepare for the big race.

Alternating between Shulman actually running the marathon through the city's five boroughs and preparing for it, Alan Zweibel, one of the original Saturday Night Live writers, introduces readers to a slew of characters that help propel his debut novel to its conclusion. Besides Coach Jeffrey, who serves as Shulman's inspiration, there's also his running partner, Maria, who upon careful scrutiny "could be considered beautiful if she weren't so heavy."

And then there's The Other Shulman.

Ever since his bar mitzvah, Shulman said he had been gaining and losing the same 30 pounds, and if one were to add up all that weight, he had lost an entire person. It's merely one of Shulman's jokes, until the doppelgnger actually appears in human form when Shulman reaches his life's crossroads. Worse, that Shulman has made life choices that Shulman has rejected and is now a successful and foreboding businessman bent on destroying his business.

The ensuing confrontation between the two forces the passive family man and affable stationary store owner to examine his past and determine that if he is to regain his self-esteem and guide his life back on track, he must face his demons.

In preparing for the race, and his eventual confrontation with T.O.

Shulman, he revisits his college days of the 1960s when he met his wife, Paula, and listened to music like Simon and Garfunkel, a time when specific individuals "were cast as major characters in an ongoing drama that was the daily life of New York City. John Lindsay got to play the handsome mayor. . . Mickey Mantle was God. Joe Namath was cool. And comedian Alan King said the same things everyone's dad said, except he got to say them on The Ed Sullivan Show."

It's an intriguing premise, but writing about an overweight suburbanite facing a midlife crisis in this case proves a threadbare plot.

So Zweibel creates and develops not only vivid characters who help bolster the story line, but also includes anecdotes about marathon history dating back to 490 B.C.

(It was Phidippides of ancient Greece who started it all when he ran the 26-mile route from the Marathon plain to Athens to tell its citizens the news of the astounding defeat of the Persian army.

Having done so, he fell to the ground dead. And it was British Queen Alexandra, during the 1908 Olympics in London, who extended the foot race's length to 26.2 miles.)

The award-winning comedic playwright and long-time friend of the late and famed Saturday Night Live regular, Gilda Radner, doesn't stop there.

Using as an example Shulman's stationary store, which is faltering due to a larger one opened by The Other Shulman nearby, Zweibel takes on the cruel, capitalistic practice of megastores squeezing out family-owned businesses, thus eliminating individual owners' pride and the personal service touch they offer their respective communities.

The humorist in Zweibel is evident in each of the novel's chapters. But it's not the slam-dunk type of humor David Sedaris provides, for instance, that spontaneously slams into you to make you laugh out loud.

Zweibel's humorous voice seems planned and styled more to a specific situation as in a skit in a sitcom.

His first novel, The Other Shulman isn't a shooting star. Yet, there are passages that entertain and contain insightful commentary on the changing American scene.

At the least, readers may think of their own life ambitions, and chuckle as Shulman articulates his basic aim.

"His goal was simple. All he wanted to do was finish . . . the New York Marathon, which he accomplished, even though he crossed the finish line dead last."

The Other Shulman

• By Alan Zweibel. Villard, 288 pages, $23.95.

• Grade: C+

Frank L. Kaplan is a retired University of Colorado professor living in Wheat Ridge.

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