THE LAST MAN COMES HOME

This, for my money, is plain sounding off, as the author of Last Man Around the World puts down in sloppy, often cheap, vernaculese, his impressions of America going to war. it is a notebook of desultory conversations with farmer, stone mason, undertaker, Hollywood director, major, novelist et al. It is a collection of sights as he travels country-wide on foot, by small boat, freight train, bus. He comments on everything from Washington Market to refugees, summer theatre, outdoor life, air raids, a plane factory, a convoy, an army camp. It doesn't add up to much, other than one man's happenstance contacts, soliloquies, observations. A disappointment.