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The main character of this novel is a somewhat namby-pamby and aimless war correspondent who returns to the United States. His seventeen year old daughter whom he has not seen for many years, runs away from a rather strict college and strict grandmother to live with her father. The other character of importance is a boorish amateur psychologist who is supposed to have been analyzed by Stekel (and now Stekel cannot defend himself—why Stekel's name is used it is difficult to say). The amateur psychologist constantly plays upon the incest theme between father and daughter. When the father breaks up the marriage of his daughter to an eminently respectable and romantic young man, she broods for a while and then commits suicide. The father then says, “I just used her. I used her to give me a sense of responsibility. I used her to make me a home. I used her as a screen to shut out, oh, the war, the punks who were my friends, a lot of things. “The author is widely informed. The novel is built up on the polymorphous perverse level with a fair abundance of four letter words. The structure of the novel is easily obvious, built up vertically rather than contrapuntally.