This is supposed to be revealing. It's not.

Honey-Lou's Greek shipping-millionnaire husband was presently in Porto Hercule with a certain notorious Greek actress, known to the American public for her role in a daring movie. Honey-Lou had no objection to such occasional flings. Leonidas had more than enabled her to savour exotic, decadent, romantic people and villas. (And beds.) Her nephew was Georgio.

Georgio was a neo-surrealist. He and Andy had barhopped in Paris and New York with Hemingway, Dylan Thomas and other experimental creative minds still living. "Tanta" Honey-Lou bought the wild paintings of Georgio and miscellaneous cohorts--she was their patron goddess. Her top-floor studio which led onto the terrace and pool, was hung with eleven portraits done by thankful young admiring artists she had helped. Not flattering ones only. In one she was a pale-green mermaid, with an ochre heart, but still with her own silky orange hair. At 45, her bikinied figure was a source of envy to those of her female contemporaries prone to envy.

Today she was expecting also the Peace Corps Director and a Northern-Mediterranean representative to the United Nations. (Those New Yorkers who refused to speak to Honey-Lou--originally a "simple" New Mexican--spoke nonetheless scandalously of her hospitality to attractive middle-aged men.)

Luther O'Flaraty and Ambassador Stephanos arrived. Georgio, after four bloody marys, felt gay. Host, as Honey-Lou hadn't returned from the airport--her friend the President of Texas University had had to be seen off--Georgio gave O'Flaraty tips on where to send volunteers in Mexico. He knew the land, he said, its villages and ruins: peyote, mescaline; its girls.

One should, I suppose, admire a classmate's ability to drop 108 pages of names. After all, that's a lot of pages, and even with large type it takes some acute observation to compile such a list in a mere twenty or twenty-two years. But if you're going to commit this vast experience to paper instead of using it at cocktail parties when no one's really listening anyway, there are a few things you ought to get straight.

First of all, you ought to spell the names right. "Cherry herring," "Ferari," and "Mercedez" are somehow less impressive than they might be. And you oughtn't qualify them. After all, you really shouldn't admit that you actually know that people exist who need subtle things like "Leif Ericson (the Norse explorer)" or "(the New Mexican artist) Georgia O'Keefe."

And then you ought to be at least a little fussy about which ones you drop. You shouldn't let on that you're not yet bored with anything more advanced than "21," the Plaza, the Colony Club, and Southampton. And Newport. Really. Now if one were bored with Arthur, Lincoln Center, and having one's hair done at Bergdorf's on Tuesday afternoon, that would be better.

There are also certain, more basic issues with which one must come to grips. Like, how should you feel about sex? Is it a good thing? Is it even worth talking about? Or does everyone know about it already? Well, I suppose it's all right to dismiss it summarily, since everyone knows that among the jeunesse doree this sort of thing goes on all the time, so why bother describing it. But certainly you're not going to admit that jet set "secrets and morals" don't go beyond occasional, normal, heterosexual, humdrum, friendly encounters? Be bored with something more exciting, please.

And religion. Surely that must be resolved before you sit down to write your "revealing probe." Is it in to believe? And in what? How do we feel about Christ? Well, let's take a look. At the beginning of the novel, He may be a way out of one heroine's dilemma. After going to church high on "benzedrin, dexedrin, nodoz" she comes home and sits down at her desk:

She wrote slowly, with agonized joy.

"Today I cried. I'll never have such a reason to cry. I cried because Christ died because he loved men. Imagine how he felt when his friend Simon Peter denied him, three times! And when they hammered the nails of iron into his hands, writhing on the cross, he may have asked himself

"Why the hell am I dying?"

Above the pain that was killing him, the smouldering temple, and above Death, He saw the people. They were tearing their hair, screaming with sorrow because of Him.

"O.K. So? They weep now. But when the power of my eyes, the magic of my voice has gone...."

He couldn't see through the blood, It streamed from under the thorns, around his nose, past his mouth, through his beard.

"Father forgive them: they know not what they do!" he cried, his last blessing to them, because He loved them.

Helen stoop up stiffly and folded the paper into her diary. She mustn't keep poor Ruth waiting any longer. She brushed her hair and sprayed on Chanel #5.

But don't worry. By the end of the novel, she realizes that Christ was a genius, of course, but no more so than Mohammed or Buddha or Machiavelli, so the best thing to do is go out and get a job. Another heroine (as we learn from her "New Angles on Life notebook") is mildly inspired by a sermon, but finds her salvation in a brass bed with an old friend who happened to be in church that morning. It's good to dismiss it all like that, but don't admit the symbolism--unless it's at the artistic level, of course. For a while you actually seemed to take it seriously, and that should never be done. Unless you're writing about your own conversion which, if treated properly, is fashionable nowadays.

Now we come to the problem of protest. Of course one must protest, but against something other than life in general. And it's often wise to pick out a few specific manifestations of what you're protesting against and treat it satirically or ironically. But choose wisely. Why, for example, say something like this?

Harry was an ever superbly tailored local banker, Edward a forty year old retired New York business man, unmarried also, who was spending the summer in Honey Lou's guest cottage. A "safe" man. And good single man for dinner parties--so many Newport ladies were between 2nd or 3rd or 4th husbands, and extra men were so valuable for dinner parties.

Even we members of the jeunesse argentee know that you need a good single man for dinner parties. And what with Legal Aid, even the jeunesse papier mache can get a divorce. So choose more wisely.

But how to expose the horror, the shame, the depravity of it all? Obviously, mere unskilled exposition won't do the job. Ah, yes. Contrast. With the corrupt poor. Or the innocent wealthy. Better yet, with both. So in the midst of preparations for a Washington society wedding, shift briefly to a southeast slum and give a two-page summary of what it's like to be poor. And have the wedding be between one of the depraved and a young, Greek innocent. Her purity of thought (which borders on the feeble-minded) will really point up the futility of it all. And then, glory of glories!, have the Deprived One murder the beautiful bride of the Depraved One. One victim of the system destroying another. Only the causes of the whole tragedy surviving it. What irony! What tragedy! What rot!

Now is the time to say, according to tradition, that after all this is a first novel and despite all its defects one cannot help admiring a college girl for sitting down and writing a novel and that we certainly hope she will try again. But it isn't really admirable to write a novel devoid of plot, characterization, style, significance, and concern. It's just a colossal lot of nerve.