Kosinski's novels consist of many … episodes, self-enclosed stories that reflect two of the novel's most traditional interests, the telling of interesting tales and the description of how something is done. His stories of psychological manipulation strike, unfortunately, a responsive chord in us all, just as his descriptions of how to make and use the hardware of our culture is closer to us than, say, a description of how to catch and cook a whale.

But rather than Moby Dick, Cockpit will remind the reader of The Confidence Man, Melville's unfinished story of a man of many disguises who manipulates people for complicated reasons. (pp. 356-57)

[A] quality found in all of Kosinski's novels [is] a dispassionate rendering of the human condition, sometimes for the sake of possible correction, sometimes for the sake of simple understanding. One of the most fascinating outcomes of reading the modern parables that make...