At Play in the Fields of the Lord is the most firmly plotted of Matthiessen's fictions: The developing story line provides both a sense of suspense and a dramatic resolution of conflict. The experimentation in form that later came to fruition in Far Tortuga (1975) is already in evidence here, in the alternation of narrative sequences to portray simultaneous action, and especially in the depiction of Moon's dream/hallucination under the influence of the drug ayahuasca (an incident given credibility by Matthiessen's own experimentation with hallucinogens in the early 1960s). Most notable among "technical" features is the appearance here of the full realization of Matthiessen's power as a stylist, although it must be admitted that, everywhere in his work, style is inseparable from substance. The profound sense of loneliness found in Matthiessen's writings, the distance and solitude present in works as divergent in form and function as Sal Si...