Van Vechten prefers to describe this work, the action of which passes in New York, 1922, and the hero of which is the god Eros, as "a cartoon for a stained-glass window." He begs his readers to imagine the attitudes of his characters, now sketched rudely in black and white, as they will appear when clothed in their final brilliant and luminous colors. The book is not "romantic" or "realistic" or "life" or "art." Assuredly it is not "fantasy" or "satire." The author has sworn before a notary public that his only purpose in creating THE BLIND BOW-BOY was to amuse. Readers, therefore, are especially warned against the danger of comparing this work with other books, written, apparently, in a somewhat different form, for it should be obvious that no purpose, beyond that just noted, actuated its construction, and no ideas are concealed beneath its surface.-------------The novel begins: "Harold Prewett sat in the broad, black-walnut seat of an ambiguous piece of furniture which branched above, in spreading antlers, into a rack for coats and hats and which below, at either side, provided means for the disposition of canes and umbrellas. The mere presence of these heavy, sullen antlers was sufficiently dispiriting to increase the gloomy atmosphere which environed the young man. The room in which he sat waiting was a hallway."