[How] strangely the words and the phrases [of West of the Rockies] seem to lie on the page—to me a puzzle more perplexing than Burgess's wild language. I suppose I just haven't the key to it. I lack the responses that would lift the words into life.

I can try to explain it this way. The story is about a time in the late 50's, before Hollywood's decline: a screen star, someone of the stature of Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner, is on the run to Palm Springs with a small-time agent, kept man of a rich wife. The star is in hysterics and is endangering a major production. Various people try to get her back to work.

Now, as this story makes itself known to us, it is very much a recitation; someone is telling the story, although the narrator is anonymous, omniscient, third-person. This unseen...