Books: Rice Pudding

IMPERIAL CITY—Elmer Rice—Coward-McCann ($3).

Riled by Broadway's lukewarm-to-cool appreciation of his three last plays (We, the People, Judgment Day, Between Two Worlds), testy, red-headed Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein) three years ago made a public face at all dramatic critics and declared he was "disenchanted" with Broadway for good. So far he has kept his word.

Now turned novelist, in Imperial City Elmer Rice has presumably found a satisfying outlet for everything that Broadway did not like. He has also included a lot that it did like. The novel runs to approximately 250,000...