Books: Somnambule in Spain

VANGEL GRIFFIN (371 pp.)—Herbert Lobsenz—Harper ($4.50).

When a novel begins, "Vangel Griffin was a mass-produced member of the middle middleclass. The first 28 years of his life were stamped, cut out and patterned like a piece of processed cheese," three people deserve instant commiseration. The first is the author, who is obviously about to grate a very stale piece of thematic cheese. The second is the reader, who is only too familiar with the fictional conformists in flim-flannel suiting. The third is the hero himself, for whom the author has such clear contempt that...