A Sense of Milieu

...A Sense of Milieu Run/Ride By Kip Crosby Grossman 342 pp $8 95 Reviewed by Eugenie Bolger The first novel has much in common with unfinished sculpture Each is frequently marred by uneven texture, uncertainties of style, and a theme more suggested than revealed Still, rough stones can be eloquent It the new novelist is seldom a consummate craftsman, he often commands a strong sense ot character and milieu Leading us into either very familiar or extremely remote territory, he earns his place on a publisher's list by bringing fresh perceptions to the commonplace or by translating the unknown into terms we can comprehend Kip Crospy is a new novelist who does both Although Run/Ride is one more trip on the old road to maturity, the travelers and their mode of transportation belong to the youth culture-in exotic, even exasperating area for the over-30, despite all the literature of the last few years Crosby does not denigrate the older culture (indeed, he scarcely deals with it), but he reveals the values of the new one with great tenderness His characters inhabit a highly specific, albeit interior world Absorbed in exploring sensation, spectators to their own growth, keenly sensitive to each other, they are attuned to a different beat The music is simple enough Don't pass judgment, don't force events, live each moment for the moment, nothing human is foul Crosby accepts these attitudes as he accepts his characters, and gives his readers no explanations Anyone who comes in contact with today's middle-class youth will recognize Crosby's minstrels To see them as the product of unhappy homes or inadequate parents is to miss the point They are neither rebellious nor angry They cling to each other, not because adults have failed m their responsibilities, but because adults do not share their concerns They seek a different kind of personal relationship, less possessive perhaps, more gentle, yet not without pain These young people grope for understanding rather than success (or the appearance of it), then-overriding need is to reach out to others No other writer I know has described this life as well as Crosby...

...His setting is a college campus and, typically, formal study is peripheral Christian Dieckmann, a kind of Dick Diver in jeans, provides the connecting link between all the characters A graduate who remains on the fringes ot college lite out of inertia and a need for protection, he sells dope and gambles, believing it less demeaning to survive precariously than to live by routine He divides his free hours between designing cathedrals, office buildings and power plants that will never be built, and pushing his motorcycle to speeds of 100 miles an hour tor the sheer joy of it His friends gather to talk, drink coffee, smoke dope, and enjoy oriental food in his disordered apart ment or m small restaurants In contrast to the frenetic gaiety or surface glitter displayed by an earlier lost generation, this one seems to advocate living grubbily as the best revenge against stiaight" society Chris' friends are oddly assorted Robin is domestic and practical, Alan shy and scholarly, 16-year-old Angie, a wounded warner, Diana, a lesbian And Sandy, a bumptious, ineffectual, irritating adolescent whom we see mature into a sensitive, confident, compassionate man, is propelled by a desire to set things right for everybody All of these people are complex, and their shifting moods and relationships are caught in perfect dialogue Crosby does not yet have a deft hand with narrative, however He tells his story in brief fragments and disconnected scenes, many of them rambling entries m Chris' diary Suspense lags, and important confrontations take place off-page There is a clutter of unnecessary detail, a scattering of inconsistencies, passages that strive for an unearned sophistication None of this is really surprising in a first novel What is surprising is the solidity of the lives Crosby describes With the clear sweetness of a Jom Mitchell tune, they linger in the memory long after Run/Ride has been put down...