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Title: Third-rate!
Review: The admirers of this book form a cult, as I think even they would admit. Like any other cult, they hold certain beliefs that make perfect sense to them, yet strike the uninitiated as, shall we say, nuts. The author, Dow Mossman, was once asked why the protangonist was missing his hair and several other useful things. Mr. Mossman replied, "Because everything is lost." If this strikes you as a pearl of Zarathustrian wisdom, I suppose these 560 pages of "oceanic" prose, ebbing and flowing away with a charmingly disregard for such stodgy concerns as structure and narrative momentum, just might be your meat. If it seems instead the self-caressing delusion of a profoundly third-rate word-spiller, you might want to pass by the brightly-clad strangers shaking their tambourines in your face and make your way to a church with a more substantial following.
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