(urth) TSH: Wolfe's first mainstream novel?

[Craig Brewer]

I just finished my first VERY fast read, so pardon any incorrect details.

But I have to say that I'm taken with Thomas Bitterman's suggestion that nothing "fantastic" actually happened. I'm not sure how (or even if) one could prove it, but a number of things lead to the notion that what we have is just a complicated scam by one brother to scam another brother. We know that Bax was jailed for "fraud" of some sort, so it makes sense that he understands something about perhaps how to defraud real estate agencies or something of that nature, so there's at least the reasonable possibility that his "good fortune" with acquiring a house, etc., has quite other explanations. He knows about Millie's weaknesses (both in terms of her feelings for George and Bax and the fact that she already visits a psychic...who even tells Millie that she cons other patrons...but not Millie, of course). The compiler's note suggests that he got the letters from Millie after Bax disappears, so, perhaps this is all coming out after Millie realizes that
 she's been conned, etc. Millie is even jealous of Doris in her first letter, and the facefox could just be another way for Bax to play that angle up while also playing on Millie's belief in the supernatural. And I don't recall, but Bax never mentions anything supernatural in his letters to Shotgun, does he?

I'm starting again, so I'll have a better notion later. But after reading Millie's first letter to Bax and seeing her naivete, I started to wonder. Bitterman's post just made sense after that.