THE SIX-ELEVEN

This concentrates on a ""day of crisis"" for each of four people on a Connecticut commuter's train which also faces disaster. One of them is already a doomed man who has just been handed the medical verdict- ""Cancer. Inoperable. Terminal."" The other three, all momentarily repentant as they board the train, may not really seem worth saving from the wreck which will take place before they reach home. They are Helen Lando, who has spent one of her days in town with a Village painter who makes a living off married women and has broadened Helen's horizontal horizons; the second is Jack Kagan, a press agent who has been combining business with pleasure- a Hollywood celebrity-tramp. And finally Frank Nelson, out of work and earning enough to get by cheating at his daily poker game on the train- Nelson who now realizes that more than circumstances have made him the cheap chiseller that he is. All involved have at least learned something about themselves in face of the manifest destiny which is overtaking them aboard the Six- Eleven.... Al Morgan's first book, The Great Man, is still his best; this has no more than a professional commercialism, pepped up by Morgan's command of a language which is midtown between Madison Avenue and Broadway.