Books: Moon's Progress

MOON GAFFNEY (289 pp.) — Harry Sylvester—Holt ($2.75).

This novel of New York City life is dedicated to a group of "good Catholic radicals" and to the proposition that the city has too many blinkered Catholic reactionaries. "I like everything about the Church except the people who run it, or try to run it," says a character in Moon Gaffney; "until we become at least as ashamed of our hate as we are of our lust, we Catholics are going to be in a bad way."

Eight years ago, in Tommy Gallagher's Crusade, James T. Farrell...