[The Company of Men deals with the] wake of wild boys—"orphans of the state"—in France, during that postwar interim when living conditions had arrived at a kind of classic hopelessness. There have been other French novels on the same theme, but The Company of Men, taking off from the hardboiled American novel, arrives at a kind of brilliant freedom and boldness, combining realism with a delicacy of fantasy and imagination that makes for an exhilarating effect. Certain techniques, too—the way the short scene is focused upon, given a wring or twist, and then dropped, its barbed point still quivering—bring to mind the movie technique at its brightest—Chaplin here, Jean Vigo in France.

The first-person narration gives it another kind of leeway. Told by a young kid, twelve when his record begins, seventeen at the end when he is ready to join the company...