Keese is clearly intended to be a twentieth-century American Everyman. It is essential to the theme that the other characters not be fully developed, but rather remain as two-dimensional figures.
Harry and Ramona are embodiments of surface good nature and vulgarity; the Greavys are textbook illustrations of contemptuousness; Keese's wife Enid seems blissfully unaware of any social undercurrents; and his daughter Elaine is self-absorbed and enigmatic, at times even appearing to be a fellow conspirator with Harry and Ramona. Berger's earlier novel, Sneaky People (1975), portrayed a small group of Midwesterners who hid their true interests from each other; in Neighbors, since the reader is restricted to Keese's point of view, the effect.....
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