by JULIET WATERS

I have a theory. If you want to find out if a guy is worth your time, ask him how he gets along with his dad. Prod a little. Don't stop if he idealizes him. That's a symptom of denial. Find out whether or not they talk openly about life, or can hang out together. Whether they argue and resolve their arguments. Whether he has a realistic knowledge of his dad's failures and successes, dreams and disappointments. These guys aren't usually so desperate to prove their masculinity. Their lives don't revolve around seducing hot girls with low self-esteem.

Doing this will probably tell you way more about guys than Rick Marin's Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor. Hyped as an entertaining, insightful memoir, it is at least unevenly entertaining. A kind of cross between Nick Hornby and Larry David, it offers a tiny bit of insight. The next time that sensitive guy you just met takes off his glasses to punctuate his sincerity ("The Earnest Swipe," Marin's signature seduction move), it might be a good time to ask him about his dad.

Ask Marin and he'd probably pull out this list. Dad: acted in Federico García Lorca's travelling theatre troupe. Cad: once hung out with Crad Kilodny, self-published author of Don't Eat Yellow Snow. Dad: exiled to French concentration camp after Spanish Civil War. Cad: went to music camp. Fled Toronto for NYC. Dad: married first wife in England during WWII. Cad: married first wife for green card. Split up after she dumped him for Gulf War reporter. Dad: long, distinguished academic career. Many books and awards. Cad: freelance career as TV critic and "He says" column in women's magazine.

Marin uses his father's accomplishments to impress chicks, but it's clear they don't have much of a relationship. In one paragraph he discusses the gap in age (his father was 48 when he was born) and experience (see above list). It wasn't a matter of his father being "unavailable" or "inaccessible" says Marin. He simply wasn't inclined to talk about himself, and Marin was too embarrassed to ask him. This small paragraph is lost amidst the wealth of nasty anecdotes about the narcissistic, nutbar, pretentious and irritating women he picks up as he rises to something near the top of the New York magazine world. By the time Marin meets the "right girl," he's making six figures as a freelancer and has taken a temporary staff position as the TV critic for Newsweek.

Sadly, Marin wastes a couple of great opportunities to bond with his dad - some awkward lunches together, a vacation in Spain. When he eventually dies of a stroke, Marin momentarily regrets the lost opportunity, but by now he's entirely focused on a woman evidently as seamlessly shallow as he is, Ilene Rosenzweig, co-author of Swell: A Girl's Guide to the Good Life.

The couple is currently on a joint book tour promoting the idea that marriage is the ultimate accessory. In the L.A. Times, Rosenzweig gushes about the "glamour," using Vivien Leigh and "Larry" Olivier as the classic example. The implicit message of Cad is that all those other girls he seduced were simply losers, so his book is indeed the ultimate accessory to her book. But forget that Leigh was a notorious nymphomaniac, and that marriage is more often used as an example of sheer misery. In other news sources Marin and Rosenzweig seem to be doing a more successful job of establishing themselves as the ultimate poseurs. At their NYC book launch, Monica Lewinsky was spotted fleeing early, according to Gawker.com, and Rosenzweig was described as glamorous like Cruella Deville.

So what lesson can we take from Cad? How about quit wondering what guys "really" think. Ask them. Ask them important questions, and if they don't have any important answers, move on. Probably if you were to dig a bit you'd find something sad about your cad. But odds are they won't ever want to go there. :

Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor by Rick Marin,
Hyperion, hc, 284pp, $34.95