THE RED CARPET

Wickenden has gone sour in this novel. What family life there is seems either completely small town stock -- or city decadence; his people have -- for this reader -- no reality; his plot is a twice told tale of a country boy come to the city there to have his dreams turn to dust. The story opens as Jason bids his high school sweetheart a final farewell and starts off for New York. Jackson Heights and his married sister's dreary apartment isn't exactly what he hoped; nor is it romantic to get a job through his brother-in-law. But he manages to fall for the wiles of an obvious platinum blonde, gets some drinks under his belt, is rescued by a poor-little-rich-boy and his charming wife (with whom of course he falls in love), finds a Greenwich Village basement ""apartment"", and sets out to see the town through a mist of love and liquor. I found it frightfully boring, neither young enough to be alluring nor mature enough to be cynically detached. At the end one assumes that Jason will seek his golden fleece in other marts before finding that it is home on the neighbor's porch.