Then, a little later on:
"What you see, babe?"
"Shadows."
"Oh."
The author seems to adhere to the idea that people under the age of forty-five use the words "yeh", "babe", and "Man" to punctuate every sentence at least twelve times, although there are some variations on this theme.
The book is a listless litany of episodes straining to be clever, but failing ignominiously. The only "action" in it has to be supplied by the reader--when he closes the volume.
Home Free's plot is aimless. The lack of focus--if intentional--may be an attempt to symbolize Gene's restless drifting, but again, it could have been handled more deftly. Wakefield is continuously showing him moving, from one university to another, one lover to the next, one town to the next. Everything moves but the plot--which is relentlessly stagnant. Everybody has a threshold of boredom. Home Free surpasses even the highest tolerance for sluggishness in fiction.