Loon Lake (novel)

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of The New York Times noted "So, in a way, it is two books we have to read – the existential adventure we get the first time through, and the tract on history we perceive when we read again knowing the outcome. But if to some degree these two books cancel one another out, they also work together to create the portrait of a new kind of American hero – a portrait rich in its psychology and historical nuance, and subtle in the imagery evoked by that isolated paradise in the Adirondacks. It tells us about love and sex and money and desire. It tells us as much about ourselves as Theodore Dreiser did."[2]

Review by Kirkus Reviews stated "Imagine a fair-to-good novel by Kurt Vonnegut in his more socio-economic, Mr. Rosewater-ish vein. Then imagine that it's been scrambled, weighed down with self-conscious prose, and avant-garded up (Joycean run-ons, blank verse, skewed tenses and pronouns) by someone intent on making a literary impression. That, unfortunately, is the general effect of this artful but lifeless picaresque novel – which follows the crossing 1936 paths of a very young vagabond and a somewhat older failed-poet, both of whom love a tormented beauty and both of whom wind up under the wing of a great tycoon".[3]