Both the review and the subsequent brief comment somehow miss the point that this “Romance of modern Venice” directly, painfully, but successfully addresses the concept behind the phrase “the whole”. In almost eight decades of reading — and I suspect that I had read this book before either of these persons had even heard of it — I can recall few such moving and credible accounts of isolation — and breaking out of it to a fulfillled life. If this be “wish-fulfillment” — a phrase which occurs with obnoxious frequency in comments on Rolfe — I say make the most of it. It is easy to snipe at Rolfe over his eccentric style, his personal abrasiveness, his proto-fascist politics, but what is ever gained by easy hits, except perhaps at a carnival shooting-gallery? With the possible exception of his biographer Donald Weeks — may God rest him — I can think of few of those who write about Rolfe who are competent, from a purely literary point of view, to carry his pencil-case. As for the rest, the total human package, Rolfe needs defenders as little as he deserves his attackers