"Eloquence is variety," a character says toward the end of "Gala," and if the equation is true then this autobiographical novel is wildly eloquent. Paul West … has a style as full of exotic ingredients as God's bouillabaisse and, in its references to nature, as comprehensive as Noah's inventory….

[If] these pages were printed in stanzas and with quirky line-breaks, they could easily pass for verse of a very high order….

Paul West [invents] … startling, dazzling meditations. His mind traveling in a comet's path, he intersects the fixed orbits of other people's preoccupations. He muses on history, biology, philosophy, literature, music, love, London, New York (which he describes as "tonic, lush, optional"), religion, divorce, anthropology. He has thrown a mental party for his readers—a gala, a festivity that links two human beings to the constellations.

Edmund White, "God's Bouillabaisse," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1977 by The...