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THE PROJECT by Andrew Sinclair

THE PROJECT

By

Pub Date: Sept. 12th, 1960
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

The author of the wry The Breaking of Bumbo (1959) here poses the morality of creating a weapon for destruction in the name of peace and the effect of bringing it to the point of firing, on four scientists, two of their wives, and a security officer. Helen is driven to experimenting with Axel, the director of the Project, finds him impotent and more devious than she suspected; Pat, her husband, suffers his cuckolding innocently; Harold and his wife Andy, in their childlessness, know greater guilt for what the Project can do; Heff, a hunchback, whose humor is as twisted as his spine, veers from mockery to a kind of faith; James, doubting Axel's integrity, is sure his security report will not contain the real truth. Axel, in his diary reveals his intentions to use the Project to ""finalize history"", to end inequality and to prove his superiority -- and heads the missile towards Russia. Some incisive portraiture, glittery argument, and cynical conversations give this a pace -- but perhaps keep it from a general market.