To read "Sons" is to read the just-published work of a serious novelist in a Joan Crawford movie. It covers thousands of miles and more than 60 years while unfolding the story of a 20th-century American family over three generations. But it is no mere rugged epic. It has an intellectual frame, like horn-rimmed glasses. Wat, Will and Bert Tyler take turns narrating the novel in the continuously repeated sequence of son, father, grandfather. This is meant to expose ironic twistings in the family line—and, or so one would have thought, differences between the narrators' voices. But the voices are one voice, and it belongs to one thousand writers. Its timbre is no less glib for being earnest as hell….

The Tylers' qualities are glued onto them because Evan Hunter wishes to show us what he supposes to be "typical" representatives of this century's generations in America. But...