Fade Out

A first novel, this is a slight, mildly amusing satire of some obvious American foibles. Pitched in low key throughout and therefore casually effective this records the experiences of an unlikely 74 year old hero. Retired after fifty years in a Baltimore bank, Dick Twombly lives with his daughter Kate in New York. Goodnatured, easygoing, he is regarded, by Kate and her dull husband Ben, as near senile; the neighbors suspect him of being a dirty old man; and for Gloria, the dimwitted teenage daughter, he is merely the object of some malicious pranks. After an unfortunate experience selling Christmas cards with his pal Behemoth Brown, a nearsighted ex-pug who wears a pince-nez, Twombly's daughter takes him to an old-age home from which he soon escapes during a weird air-raid drill. He joins Behemoth and the two adventurers set out for Phoenix, Arizona. Their zany odyssey provides them with some peculiar companions: a lobbyist for juvenile delinquency who writes advertising jingles; a writer who dictates, while driving, some thoughts on "Around the States in Eighty Hours". Hitchhiking, they are arrested in New Mexico, escape during a forest fire and find themselves in Harding, a ghost town where they decide to settle. The book's extended triviality and gross unlikelihood does not disguise the seriousness of its theme: the plight of the aged. (Kirkus Reviews)