Invited to a party by his friend Martin Thurber, the avant-garde writer Keith Logan quickly begins to turn their host against him by his radical views on God, evolution, religion, literature, etc., with a result that he quite spoils the party atmosphere for Edward Hurst and unwittingly puts the future of Thurber's employment as an art critic for Hurst's magazine in jeopardy ... when, under duress of a hangover the following morning, the publisher decides to dispense with his art reviews partly in revenge for the intellectual humiliations inflicted upon him by Logan the previous night. Yet Hurst has a crush on Thurber's girlfriend, who was also at the party and, bumping into him in the street one afternoon, Greta Ryan elects to place her body at Hurst's disposal if only he will agree not to take any disciplinary action against Thurber. Reluctantly Hurst agrees to her proposal and it looks as though, thanks to her influence, Thurber's future as an art critic is assured. In the meantime, however, the latter has invited Keith Logan to accompany him to a West End gallery to view an avant-garde artist whom he has been commissioned to review for Hurst, and before long he falls under the writer's radical influence and ends-up penning quite the most eulogistic review of such an artist ever! Hurst, however, is less than impressed and, under pressure from his sub-editor, he finds himself in the unenviable position of having to reject Thurber's review and effectively break his promise to Greta. Naturally when the latter hears about this from her boyfriend, who now faces dismissal, she is incensed, and secretly vows to take her revenge on Hurst. Unable to confide in Thurber, who knows nothing of her sexual accommodation with his boss, she visits Keith Logan and together they decide to contact Hurst's brother-in-law to see if he can be persuaded to publish the review instead, since he also runs an arts magazine. Happily for Thurber, Colin Patmore agrees to publish it; though only on condition that Greta befriends him on terms similar to those earlier secured by Hurst - or so one is led to infer from the dénouement, in which Logan witnesses Greta and Patmore getting into a taxi together and heading along the Charing Cross Road. Echoes of 'An Interview Reviewed' (1979) abound here, though LOGAN'S INFLUENCE is much deeper and more radical in its theorizing, as well as more cynical in its evaluation of human relationships. An engrossing read!