Loon Lake of the title is also the name of a retreat for millionaire industrialist F. W. Bennett where the drifter Joe temporarily finds home, after being attacked by the wild dogs surrounding the estate.

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.

"[2] Kirkus Reviews stated that: "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".