Books: Night of Decay

THE WAX BOOM (307 pp.) — George Monde/— Random House ($4.95).

Madness and war, the subjects of George Mandel's third novel, have been the most durable literary themes of the last two decades. This is probably not because the period has seen the spilling of more blood and sanity than others, but because it seems more than others to be the era of the average man, who obsesses authors with the similarities of his predicament rather than the individuality of his struggle. Many novelists nowadays tend to upend art to write about predicaments...