Loneliness

In spite of the wit, humor, and occasional poetry with which it is written, there is an overall sense of darkness about the novel and its themes, a darkness anchored in and essentially defined by loneliness. Specifically, there is a strong sense about both narrator and narration that central character P.B. Jones is not only personally lonely, but surrounded by loneliness that in many ways seems to echo his own. While he never explicitly comments that he is lonely, the stories he tells and the way he tells them combine to suggest that at the very least he is acutely sensitive to loneliness, a circumstance which, logic suggests, he has (to coin a phrase) an intimate acquaintance.

To begin with, Jones' frequent references in narration to the atmosphere of the YMCA are shot through with frequent references to searching, to isolation within that searching, and to a...