Gay prison love ; class difference marriage; existential crisis. It's really hard to decide where the weight falls in this novel. I found myself getting annoyed with its drifty 1960s nature but at the end, it's very rewarding in the way that character studies are. It's pretty much a character study of a guy, who, if we were to diagnose him, has some form of oppositional defiance disorder. Interestingly, Carpenter isn't at all didactic or judgemental about his characters – he really knows what hopelessness looks and feels like — but the ending is so angry. So angry while being totally unexpected. Basically, eat the rich, is what he's saying.

Jack Levitt, an orphanage boy, juvenile delinquent and hustler, doesn't have any ambitions — he knows how things are going to work out already, so he's just there for the ride:

He had desires, and nobody was going to drop out of the sky to satisfy them. He tried to milk a little self-pity out of this thought, but it did not work: he had to recognise that he preferred his singularity, his freedom. All right. He knew what he wanted. He wanted some money. He wanted a piece of ass. He wanted a big dinner, with all the trimmings. He wanted a bottle of whiskey. He wanted a car, in which he could drive a hundred miles an hour (he had only recently learned how to drive, and he loved the feelings of speed and control, the sharpness of the danger). He wanted some new clothes and thirty-dollar shoes. He wanted a .45 automatic. He wanted a record player in the big hotel room he wanted, so he could lie in bed with the whiskey and the piece of ass and listen to “How Hight the Moon” and “Artistry Jumps.” That was what he wanted . So it was up to him to get these things.