In his debut novel, "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls," Connecticut native and established screenwriter Anthony Tambakis ("Jane Got a Gun," "Warrior," the impending "Sun Dogs" and "Karate Kid 2") deals with some fairly weighty literary constructs. They would include: the distinction between "character" and "personality"; real-world immediacy contrasted by the timelessness of art; and negotiating the structural and aesthetic differences between writing novels and films.

But "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls" is no way reads like a thesis. Instead, it's stunningly comic, with laugh-out-loud lines and descriptions on virtually every page — and yet it's also a tender and desperately sad story of romantic obsession, the shifting sands of a relationship, and the self-delusion embedded in addiction. It's as though Dan Jenkins rewrote "Under the Volcano" — and Parisi, a former creative writing professor and a recipient of the Paul Bowles Fellowship for fiction, nuances the opposite forces of tragedy and comedy with balletic grace.

The narrator, Ray Parisi, is a one-time ESPN sportscaster whose headlong fall from success and what he regarded as a perfectly happy marriage is tied to a raging gambling problem as well as the emotional cocoon provided by his own charisma. His innate self-confidence is such that he refuses to accept with any seriousness that his ex-wife, known as "L," is about to remarry. In fact, he regards her fiancé, a successful, much-older entrepreneur, as a sort of personal affront.

Living in squalor, Ray gets an unexpected break when his estranged father dies and leaves him $600,000. Rather than pay off his debtors and rebuild his life, though, he comes up with a scheme to head to Vegas, hit the tables and turn his stake into $2 million — which would be just enough, he blithely believes, to buy a specific estate once romanticized by L. The gesture, Ray believes, will make her leave her fiancé, and they will rebuild their once idyllic life.

There is plenty of Connecticut lore in the book — in addition to ESPN, the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos where Ray fans the flames of his burgeoning addiction, as well as the titular Bridgeport girls — but the bulk of the story takes place in Vegas. There, with support from an unlikely comrade, Renee, a runaway teen with a tender heart and a street-wise wisdom that makes up for any lack of formal education, Ray stumbles through the lunacy of Las Vegas. Despite or perhaps because of his own self-deception, he somehow and farcically lands on his feet time after time. When, at last, a rendezvous in Memphis at L's wedding begins to seem likely, Tambakis pulls off a magnificent and bittersweet denouement.

Tambakis, who grew up in Fairfield and now splits his time between Venice, Cal., and New York City, recently answered questions about "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls." His answers have been edited for space.

Q. For all his considerable faults, Ray is a hilarious and likeable character, and his laser focus on regaining his wife seems a supremely romantic if increasingly sad quest. Ultimately, he seems a character flawed by his own charisma. That must have been difficult to write.

A. One thing to remember is that Ray is speaking in the first person, but he's reflecting back on the past. He has a little more self-awareness than in-the-moment. It's only when you're standing in the wreckage that you can actually look at it and see it. That softens it a bit.

It always comes down to the difference between personality and character. If you have a big personality and people like you, it's easy to hide character flaws. Ray's like that. Some beautiful women in our society are never required to develop a character because it's so easy not to. Ray's been winning his whole life by not doing anything — but the big personality guys always and ultimately fail because character wins out.

Q. To counterbalance Ray's seductive likeability, you start off each chapter with a diary excerpt from L. Therein, you see from her perspective Ray's metastazing devotion to a distorted fantasy of the past. These are so revealing and haunting that I don't think the novel could succeed without them. In fact, I became convinced you may well have written L's diary excerpts before the rest of the novel. Did that happen?

A. I do see why you would think that but, in the end, it was almost exactly the opposite. When I started the book, I completely related to Ray but, as I worked the process of his life and finished, I understood L much better. I added the diary excerpts later for much-needed context. The way we always tell our break-up stories —  the one you've probably been bored by from friends or family (laughs) — is totally about "me." By which I mean we always tell these stories to be the victim or the hero and to portray the ex as a total shrew or whatever. But there are always two sides.

Q. You sure know a lot about gambling and casinos. Is there anything in your past that we should know about?

A. (Laughs) I grew up in Fairfield, but not the rich part. But we all knew each other. Half of my friends were already preordained to be doctors and successful and they definitely had it together. Fairfield connotes preppy. We didn't grow up that way — the rest of us were drunks or artists or blue collar workers — but we wanted that money. We'd spend a lot of time in Bridgeport because you could gamble — even at 14 if you knew the right people.

My grandfather took me to the jai alai in Bridgeport and we'd go to the races at Belmont Park. And we did it not to have fun so much but to make money. In 1985, (former Mets pitcher) Dwight Gooden went on a 16-game winning streak and we rode that. Every time he pitched, it was like they handed us money.

Q. You mentioned that you comprehensively outline each character before you start writing. How hard is that, and how does the natural and overall flow of humor play into that?

A. You have to be an insane person to write. Hemingway said it was easy. "Open up a vein and bleed." My process is to do a lot of prep work — outline, character development, and figuring out everything ahead of time. It's all ready, and I work that way with the movies, too. I literally have maybe 3- or 400 details about each character. If I do that, then on good days, a character might take off, and I become nothing more than a glorified stenographer. And if they're funny characters, well ...

The character Ray cracked me up all the time. I miss that guy. Of course, there are elements of my voice in there but, for example, the conversations between Renee and Ray are completely a result of their characters, and I just found myself laughing out loud at them. Those are the best days. That's the magic for me. Then you revise and revise. One of my advisors once told me, "You're finished when you've exhausted a story's potential for meaning."

Q. Renee is a tremendous character. In no way does she represent Ray's ideal of a soul mate — only L does that — but Renee is so sweet and funny that I found myself wondering if you'd dig a hole for yourself: if her relationship with Ray doesn't end well, do you significantly damage the reader's sympathy for your protagonist?

A. That's a spot-on observation. If you write a really sympathetic character that people feel for, you can't have the protagonist (screw) her over. Or at least I can't. I suppose it depends on what the goal is. But with both the original ending and the published version — which were very different — Renee ... well, let's just say I always had the knowledge that she had to have a happy ending.

Q. It's very rare that, in general, comic novels or films are given as much intellectual heft as more serious efforts. To me, "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls" is very much a work of literature — even as I laughed through the darkness. Do you worry about how the book will be perceived in this context?

A. It's a concern, though typically I run away from any kind of marketing stuff. If (the publisher or critics or readers) want to put it in a certain category, they will. I think calling it a tragicomedy is probably best. The tragedy is there but the humor cuts that and there are elements of both. I don't think anyone would recommend it as a strictly "funny" book because it's more than that. I'm very happy with the way it came out.