other child, allow the use of contraceptives. He blames God, or, rather, decides there is no God because no God could have allowed his mother to die for her very piety. His faith, his belief are gone, but not the consuming sense of guilt which his mother, the church and the priest have succeeded in awakening within him. His father's honest sensuality and his own burgeoning desire fill him with loathing and contempt.

Partly for the money, partly from boredom, partly from frustration, he seizes upon a friend's idle suggestion that "what they oughta do is go out and roll a queer." Their first attempt is successful, and, while the money they get is rewarding, it is Vincent's beating and kicking of the already insensible victim which really sends him. He can scarely wait for their money to be gone so that he can reasonably suggest another foray into Central Park. This charming pastime, by a preposterous series of events, results in his being asked to become a member of the staff of a fabulous Arabian Nights Greenwhich Village whorehouse. He accepts the invitation when he finds his father pumping away in his aunt's bed.

While he is in the whorehouse, which caters to men and women, sadists and masochists, heterosexuals and homosexuals, in fact, to anyone who has the money to pay the fees, Vincent spends his free time drinking gin, smoking marijuana, and talking with (and occasionally making love to) Doreen, a charming, beautiful, but quite ordinary female whore. Vincent is fifteen and has not yet finished high school; Doreen is eighteen and only a year before was a small time hustler in some Alabama slum. Despite their ages and their backgrounds Vincent and Doreen discuss life, THE LIFE, that is to say, their life, love, death, and happiness, with all the trenchancy and acuity of a La Rochefoucauld and Mme de

LaFayette. The marijuana and gin, no doubt!

Eventually Vincent is "leased out" to a talented, clever, and very, very, wealthy homosexual with whom he lives for some undetermined period of time. In the end Vincent revolts, kills his patron and the patron's cook, and then scurries off home where he attempts to kill his father (for the second time) and his aunt, now his step-mother. Needless to say, Vincent ends up in a psychopathic hospital. As the time for his release approaches, he recalls the events which have led up to his incarceration, and we have this novel.

This is a seX novel, and I spell it "seX," and not "Sex," because that's the way it is. Everything is backward, upsidedown, and distorted. There's "sex" on every page, the book is obsessed with it, and yet it's really all talk-there isn't an honest "sex scene" in all its pages. There are no titillating scenes, and anyone who

scene.

reads it with the expectancy of finding one will be sadly disappointed. This is certainly not pornography, if we accept any dictionary's definition of that word, but it may well be "obI seriously doubt, however, that anyone will ever take this book. court because, by conventional courtroom standards the book might be considered quite moral and even healthful. I say this because there's no joy, no exaltation, no freedom, and no real pleasure to be associated with the major consideration of sex. Furthermore, all the book's principal characters come to a bad end, and nothing could be more "moral" than that.

This is not a "gay" novel. Nor is it a homosexual novel despite the fact that there are homosexuals who flit across its pages and that there are a great many words referring to homosexuals and to homosexuality. I say that it is not