Books: Goodfellow's Progress

DUGGAN (167 pp.)—Richard Dougherty—Doubleday ($3.50).

The goodfellow is large, well informed, modest and moneyed; he has decent impulses and the ability to keep such impulses decently in check. To the goodfellow, self-respect is a garden path, not the tightwire it is to most men. Thus securely footed, the goodfellow can perform extraordinary acts of treachery while maintaining an excellent opinion of himself. Others almost invariably share this opinion.

In this nasty, low, mean and excellent novel, the goodfellow under scrutiny is Crandall Avery. best friend to Robert Duggan, the novel's narrator. With warm misanthropy...