Jerzy Kosinski calls George Levanter, the hero of his novel "Blind Date," a "small investor." But to me he is more like a claims adjuster in the ambiguous morality of the modern world. Among other things, Levanter is a skier and, as the West declines, he finds sport on its slope….

When Levanter rapes a beautiful young girl whom he might legitimately have won, he does it simply because it is admissible in his morality. [Here] one feels that the author is dealing in cynical homiletics. There is a considerable proportion of sexual activity in "Blind Date," and most of it can only be understood as a search for something other than pleasure. Levanter is obsessed, for example, with a prostitute who kills an anonymous chauffeur who seems intent on killing them with his driving. She stabs him in the neck with a sharpened comb and later his...