This book should carry a Moon Warning. It opens in the summer of the astronauts’ moon landing. This is the first of a host of moon references. A telephone call to a police station is answered by a Sergeant Neil Armstrong. A character called Uncle Victor plays the clarinet in bands called the Moonlight Moods and the Moon Men. The hero/narrator (of whom more shortly) rents a New York apartment from which he can see the neon sign of the Moon Palace restaurant. He picks up a hooker who calls him a lunatic; he talks of his ‘doom’ in terms of a total eclipse; he goes on about ‘radiant Diana...image of all that is dark within us.’

All the above occurs within the first twenty nine pages. There are two hundred and fifty pages of mooning to go before the hero, with a nod in the direction of Sons and Lovers (as usual Auster gesticulates much in the direction of Other Artists), hoofs it towards a final