Books: No End in Sight

THE ROAD BETWEEN (463 pp.)—James 7. Parrel I—Vanguard ($3.50).

In 1938, Critic Clifton Fadiman read Novelist James Farrell's No Star Is Lost and wrote (in The New Yorker): "If his editors will only strap him down tight, shoot him full of morphine, and, while he is helpless, perform some major operations not on him but on his prose, Mr. Farrell's effectiveness will increase, and so will the number of his readers." Either the publishers let Fadiman's prayer go unheeded or Farrell refused to submit to the operation. More than ten years and twelve books later, the Farrell prose is still a better...

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