WORLD FULL OF NIGHTINGALES

Unable to shake Henry David and his Pond, Archie Bleeker leaves his father and his American millions in search of the examined life. First, it's England and a second-rate job teaching some second-rate Somalis the fundamentals of English prose. Failing miserably by his boss's standards, Archie is forced to take a post in the mythical principality of Kojast. He is to teach English literature in the university. Here Archie gets himself involved with a rabble-rousing Tory professor, a couple of libidinous Empire wives, a young Persian woman, all caught up in the ways of the West and Simone de Beauvoir. He, of course, ends up in the clink, and is released only to be seduced in a most dastardly fashion. The funniest of Vaughan's characters is a barely justifiable, exceedingly minor personage--a Toledo tool-and- dye mogul who traverses the globe, making up dirty jokes. Highly improbable, sometimes amusing.