Richie, it is clear, is a restless artist. He is not the sort who, having mastered one trick early in his career, devotes the rest of his years to repeating it, a procedure that usually peters out in a series of paler and paler imitations of the ever-receding success. Rather, in fictions ranging from bawdy tales drawing, one assumes, on Richie's early days in Tokyo, to naturalistic accounts that evoke his American upbringing, to allegories that unsettle, Richie has avoided comfortable, if competent, monotony. He manages, always, to keep it new.