THE ORPHAN

This is another young novel about a young man, Peter Wolfe, trying to find himself by losing himself altogether based on the principle he calls ""creating the objective correlative"" -- namely setting up certain facts which would then provoke certain feelings. To begin with Peter claims (wrongly) that he is an orphan when first met in Venice, California drifting from one girl to another. Except for a little acid and pot, most of his experiences are concerned with the flesh and never get under the skin. One bad day is followed by another until finally there are no ""facts left"" -- he has no job, money, girls, or friends and is thoroughly divested when he meets another unreliable young woman, Jolli, whose abandonment of him is the first real jolt but also an occasion of hopeful discovery. Mr. Shannon has written the novel he's intended to write with a certain competence in the vogue you might call contemporary splintered driftwood. The trouble is that he hasn't made it matter, really.