Although he has written and published seventeen novels in the past fourteen years, David Slavitt considers himself first and foremost a poet, a poet who writes novels to earn some time and money to support his habit of writing poetry. So, in 1967, when he published the popular novel The Exhibitionist under the pen name of Henry Sutton and with massive promotion by the publisher (and a certain amount of pure luck), it rose high on the New York Times best-seller list and stayed there for months, earning both author and publisher a decent fortune Slavitt had achieved the Walter Mitty dream of almost every poet in America--to write a bona fide, big time best-seller. Slavitt had written one novel, Rochelle (1966), under his own name; the clever, witty, intelligent, serious novel appeared, sold a handful of copies and vanished without a trace in a few months. There was, it...