Works for me. I am reading onlisp while I learn arc, and although I don't fully understand half the code in the book the concepts are what's important.
As an example; I think it's like chapter 25 where pg describes how one can do object oriented programming in lisp. I was able to look at his code a see how his functions became fewer more readable lines in arc, but more over I am able to start working on oo concepts even though arc doesn't have a direct map to class and superclass functions.
The really good idea would be to rewrite all the code from the book in Arc. I love the book and I don't know Common Lisp. The book would be much clearer with examples written in Arc. For example generalized variables: I didn't even read examples from the book, I read the Arc source instead.