I have to agree with everyone who found The Foreign Correspondent a listless rehashing of increasingly shopworn characters and effects. Carlo is Casson without the freshness or depth. The scene at Henninger's, featuring protagonists of earlier and better novels, is a joke on the reader. Doesn't Furst have an editor? Or does his ms. go straight to the printer? Here's an idea: if Random House can't afford to provide Furst with an editor's advice, why not show the draft of his next novel to 20 typical readers? I'm sure the result of such a process would be a book in keeping with what we all know Furst is capable of. What do you say, Alan?