Mr. Newman handles the novel like a wind-up toy. It stops and starts and covers a little distance--namely between two unexpected points. In fact surprise is its only momentum and as such it might hook your curiosity even if it won't satisfy it for very long.... John Corbie, formerly Andy Snyder of Westport, runs away to the Southwest to start again and there is involved with (a) Anson Laswell, head of a large laboratory whose assistant he becomes; (b) Sukey, Laswell's half-Japanese niece who is most alluring but wears a chastity belt with an indecipherable lock; (c) Dr. Brock, the laboratory's former physicist who disappears in the desert; (d) Bjorn, an agitator, who turns out to be Sukey's father; (e) a women with whom he falls in love.... It's full of glossy modern paraphernalia (wordplay; phenomenology; mystique) but it all seems to be as much of a contemporary shell game as an entertainment.