Who He? or The Rat Race

Alfred Bester, science-fiction novelist of note, wrote a non-science fiction novel called "Who He?" to very little acclaim.  It's a story set in the production of a New York-based variety TV show called (yes, eponymously, my tyrannical inner lexicographer) "Who He?" It was first published in 1953, and is set in that era.
 
Jordan Lennox is one of the creators of the show, and also the head writer.  Like the whole milieu he moves in, Jordan (aka Jake) is a poison-eater - psychologically dysfunctional in just the right way to take all the rubs, slights and cruelties of the business to heart and then turn it into good work.  But he has a number of problems - he's drinking heavily and having extended blackouts, and his show is under attack from a sinister letter writer called "Knott".  He has to deal with anxious stars, alcoholic actresses and all-powerful producers.  And then he runs into Gabby Valentine, and finds himself in love with her. Unfortunately, Gabby is a communist and married to Lennox's nemesis - and she's not a poison-eater: she is sanity itself.

The story is a psychological detective thriller, reminiscent of the Demolished Man.  Bester can't write uninterestingly, and he creates a coherent and oppressive world in this novel.  I think the things that stand between it and success are to do with the over-reaching psychoanalytical take on personality. The point of the novel is to confront poison-eating and put forward the alternative; but there is something a little cartoonish about people drawn in full, with their repetitions and tics and blind spots more present to us than they are to themselves and people they interact with.  This is probably uncomfortable because it is true - I shudder to think how transparent my need to be right and use the right words, my laziness and my ludicrously inflated sense of my own understanding is.

Bester's wife Rolly was a modestly successful actress and later an advertising executive and he was a New Yorker most of his life.  They had no children.  She predeceased Bester and he left his estate to his barman.