Art critic Peter Plagens’s first novel, Time for Robo (Black Heron. $24.95), is what you’d expect from a guy whose first NEWSWEEK piece compared Cezanne to Ernest Tubb–a surreal waltz across space, time and cultures. Ex-hoops star Robo is a lost soul in search of Dad and the meaning of life. Our narrator, by the way, is a computer that quacks like a duck.
