ASLEEP IN THE AFTERNOON

One of these stunt-satires, which a limited few may like, but which we found chiefly head and little body, intellectualized spoofing, tedious except at its best. There is a novel within a novel, in which a chemical engineer lives on his savings in order to write a novel about a sleep-inducing machine. Chapter by chapter, progress, background, results -- makes the gist of the book. It is a take-off on modernisms, with faddists, effects literati, health culturists, pseudo-modernists et al. Not for a great many.