Slot Machine has one basic location, the Christian Brothers Academy Camp which is set in "the idyllic rolling green hills of the St. Paul's Seminary Retreat Center" (as the brochure describes it) somewhere in the New England countryside. The purpose of summer camps like this one was originally to give urban youngsters an opportunity to experience the natural world. While the landscape beyond the campgrounds retains the features of the New England landscape that have inspired writers from Emerson and Thoreau to Robert Frost and Donald Hall, the camp compound resembles a minimum security prison, with tendencies leaning toward a more subtle concept of incarceration. From the introductory letter, which combines exhortation with threatened co-ercion—"You will have fun. We insist"—to the hyper-organized schedule limiting freedom of action, the various "sectors" designed for specific activities and the assemblies gathering the entire population for pep-talks and...