THE STRAW HAT

This belongs to the ""why bother"" school -- tough, crude, cruel, and pointless. Vogel did one rather impressive but unsuccessful book on relief, Man's Courage. This is something else. It deals with a group of cheap, vulgar people, living in and off an amusement park where Vincent, escaping from his respectable small town family, goes on vacation with Uncle Gus. Gus takes Vincent in hand; primes him for an easy lay in a hayloft, takes a good beating for Vincent's seduction by a tart whose lover was the Italian who ran the hamburger stand. Vincent goes home -- the reader goes to sleep.