JOY TO LEVINE!

All about the coming of age of a shy, sullen, ineffectual fellow who works for an old school stenographic system which is being forced into obsolescence by the vowelless better jb-methods. Levine pursues a generously proportioned office secretary who goes on a crash diet and leaves him, fights with his self-deceiving father continually, wallows in self-pity (he had an accident-prone childhood that left him with only four fingers on one hand and a slight limp), and dreams of the day that he can escape to Jones Beach. Obviously Miss Rosen writes about what she knows. The gamut is here. She knows a great deal about New York's subway system (absolute expertise regarding the Sea Beach line), 4th Avenue offices in the summer, Jewish parents, crowded luncheonettes, and Bronx girls who under no circumstances want to sound like girls from the Bronx. But as one journeys with Levine on the Sea Beach Express blushing at the various perversions inflicted upon the poster advertisements, swelters with him in his 4th Avenue office, meets the parents of the girl, dines in the , and listens to the lingual deceptions of the Bronx secretaries, one comes away nonetheless knowing very little about Levine. This is of the genre ""Jewish subway"" and not a very good specimen. The author might have tried the IRT.