When Wild Oats by Jacob Epstein appeared in 1979, I read it with pleasure. It seemed to me a typical first novel, very much in the American grain. Divorced parents, college, disastrous first love, comic ineptitude in sex; dread of acne, of unfinished term papers, of drunk and sermonizing adults; unease with the blankness of the future—one of those books in the tradition of Catcher in the Rye….

The New York Times of October 21 prominently displayed a news story from England, telling of an article published in The Observer and written by Martin Amis … whose novel of 1973, The Rachel Papers, he believes supplied Epstein with a number of lines, lifted with a few changes, and "chunks."…

I have just read a library copy of The Rachel Papers and my faith in Wild Oats is restored. Both of these novels are very good and they are scarcely alike. They...