["Moonshine Light, Moonshine Bright"] eschews immortality entirely in favor of illegality: sub rosa gambling, bootlegging, underage pool playing and other racy pastimes. All of this activity seethes during one long, bustling summer in a Columbia, S.C., slum, populated by poor whites too joyous to be Snopeses.

The episodic design of the novel is neatly lashed together by a couple of teen-age boys, Earl Edge and Coley Simms, who will stop at nothing to scrounge enough money to buy a car. These delinquent Penrods begin a life of crime selling empty bottles to the local bootlegger, and matriculate by running an automatic still in a wild and very funny interlude. Mr. Fox … is an ingenious storyteller; but it is the saltiness of his characters that gives the book its special flavor. (p. 42)

Martin Levin, "Reader's Report," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1967 by The New York Times...