Port of Saints is a bizarre trip through the murky depths of a man's psyche, a search for identity that seems a distorted cross between James Joyce and Henry Miller. A tour de force of sharply etched scenes, partly autobiographical, it is designed to show the wasteland of modern life perfectly reflected in the wasteland of a developing consciousness.

The major flaw in the novel is the lack of correspondence between that mirrored world and the one that most men see. The developing psyche is not everyman's; it is the nearly psychotic mind of a sadomasochist homosexual. Only an acceptance of this world view as meaningful can save Port of Saints from being dismissed as decidedly minor. But is this a vision that many can share?… This is not great literature; it isn't even very good. Burroughs is one more modern author, in a growing list, who has...