a modern book. The story has a coffeehouse setting, and the only other places mentioned are the park and the bed. The characters are mainly concerned with sex, not unlike most people. And the book seldom gets beyond this subject despite the claims of the publisher that it is an attempt to probe the world of the drifters an attempt to look into the minds of young men and women caught in a trap not of their own making.

The trap in this case is supposed to be that the characters were bred in the midst of the Great Depression, grew up knowing the terror of the Second World War and face a future where global destruction is the goal of society. We might ask, if this is the problem then why didn't the author ever seek a solution?

Out of this new "lost" generation we meet Mitchell. He wants to be a writer, but he doesn't want to work. He bums off women because he is good in bed. He is, naturally, neurotic but not in comparison with the other persons in the book. They all meet at the coffee-house and discuss trivial things while they think about their sex problems. Barry doesn't have any sex life because he is living with his mother, and she controls his behavior. Herman is so busy hating queers that he thinks everyone except himself is in need of a psychiatrist. This is partly

true. He finally goes to one himself and spends his time outwitting the doctor on the matter of his latent homosexuality.

So much for the homosexuals. The heterosexuals come off little better in The Century God Slept. Beth finds she can't enjoy sex anymore since she let herself be raped by a handsome football player when she was still in high school. She wants to be punished for every sex act. Peggy, for another reason, prefers to have sex only with men she doesn't know. On these characters the story hinges. Not much of a story? Most of it consists of conversations in which various persons discuss their sex attitudes.

If this is the way people behave, and probably some portion of our population falls into this picture, then I suppose we must face the fact and try to do something with what we have, no matter how unlikely the outcome. The alarming part of it is that there is something real about every one of the characters.

The Century God Slept is a hard book to read not only because of the writing but because of the many different type faces used: capitals, bold face, and italics are strewn on every page to no purpose. It all causes one to wonder if the author and publisher did not take a nap along with their God. -W.E.G.

VRIENDSCHAP

Monthly magazine in Dutch; photos and drawings, also articles about women. $4. yearly.

Postbox 542, Amsterdam, Holland.

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