Books: Decline & Fall of Metaphor

THE WHISTLING ZONE by Herbert Kubly. 348 pages. Simon & Schuster. $4.95.

The author of a prizewinning travel book, An American in Italy, has come home to write a satire about America. So much contact with Roman antiquities has convinced Herbert Kubly that America is also ripe for a fall. The yahoos have taken over, free speech is stifled, the kids are sex-mad. It is an "informers' land," says one character who is supposed to speak the plain, unvarnished truth. "We're a species of children, rather nasty children, tattling on one another, playing with our toys of microphones and wire taps."

The poor...

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