LIFE AT HAPPY KNOLL

One wonders whether there are enough golf club members who can view with detachment the peccadillos of their fellow members to provide a market for this offbeat contribution to the Marquand gallery of unfavorite people. Happy Knoll is one of two competing clubs in a suburban community (presumably near New York). The story- if such it can be termed- is developed through a sheaf of letters, most of them written by a Board member to the president emeritus, to keep him au courant with the events of club-shattering importance -- and to pry loose another contribution to its shaky finances. One sees, through these letters, and other bits of random correspondence, the efforts of the club to secure well-heeled new members; the divided loyalties in relation to the aging and incompetent bar tender, the locker room attendant, the golf pro, and the caddies; the differing viewpoints regarding uses made of the clubhouse for parties, increasingly raucous and out-of-hand; the attitude towards women- and their place in the scheme of an all-men membership; the rights of members to use the locker room for nude drinking parties -- or simply a place to change their shoes, and so on. Frankly I found it very dull reading.