[In the following review, Rochmis offers a negative assessment of Mister White Eyes.]

Among the least rewarding of this novelist, Gold's current novel [Mister White Eyes] centers on Ralph Merian, a veteran journalist who refers to himself as the V. J. What puts the reader off is the fact that Merian is not a likable character despite Gold's fascination with him. He is a man who has been at the center of a multitude of conflagrations: his early family life was no bed of roses, he has had two unhappy marriages and has sworn off love forever. He is, however, now quite taken with an attractive woman, Susan, from England, but shies away from considering what he feels for her is love.

Sent to Arizona to cover the story of the Stony Apaches, who have invested their tribal capital in a phony film venture, Merian meets Hawkfeather, a derisive character who despises the journalist and calls him Mister White Eyes. Throughout this period, Merian is obsessed with thoughts of Susan, when he visits his disturbed brother Chaz, he is even more obsessed with finding, or at least pinpointing, the core of his own being.

But so little of Gold's writing is plausible, so much is left unsaid, so much seems self-indulgent, that at story's end we are still as perplexed as we were at the start. No writer should do that to his readers; no reader can justify such manipulative inaccessibility.