I have been mulling over the sense of dreariness [Kosinski] provokes—a dreariness quite separate from that conjured up by his venomous outlook on life. He presents a brutal, anarchic world, where only the man who takes things into his own hands is commendable. His famous flat tone has been interpreted as an emblem of the flatness of modern life. The trouble is that the symbolism fails; the books refuse to produce the overtones that dozens of reviewers (and the author) have hopefully and earnestly sought to find. My own feeling of dreariness came from reading badly written, sadistic hocus-pocus, and not from being overwhelmed by a convincing view of life-as-crap.

To begin with mechanics, Kosinski's prose, which is so easy to read that it is unnoticeable, turns out to be a string of clichés….

The writing is simple enough and clear enough to read with minimal...