[The Men's Club] is a talky little novella about a group of men who troop into a vine-covered Berkeley home to rake over their pasts and give their consciousness a lift. Since Michaels is one of those fiction writers overfond of toning up their prose with homages to Kafka, I waited for the book's obligatory reference to the illustrious K., and I was swiftly rewarded. Chapter Three begins: "'I wait like an ox,' says Kafka." The novella itself is a piece of Kafkaesque slapstick…. Michaels has a flair for deadpan comedy and slightly askew lyricism, but he's also capable of show-offy coarseness (as when he describes a man sucking in marijuana smoke "against crackling sheets of snot").

As a pop allegory, The Men's Club lacks clarity, compactness; the spilling, sprawling secrets of these Berkeley clubbies soon leave the book awash in chatter and confusion. Brief as the...