New Novels
Brady, Susan
New Novels by Susan Brady TIhe new novel, The Child Buyer ¦¦- (Knopf. $4) is the work of a very angry man—John Hersey. It is, as the subtitle so conveniently informs us, "A novel in the form of...
...Only sheer determination, however, can carry a reader to the end of A Question of Innocence (Macmillan, $3.95) by Donald Winks...
...Much has been made of his mordant criticism of modern educational methods (particularly the attempt to make education "scientific"), and of American political leadership...
...Miss Gilbert handles her characters well and succeeds in evoking the harsh and bitter atmosphere of slum life...
...In the process he presumably matures...
...There are three that I have just read, and none is likely to set the critical world on fire...
...As a satire, The Child Buyer could have used, perhaps, a little more levity but that failing pales in the light of Hersey's white-hot rage...
...Wissey Jones quickly cons the price of everyone standing between him and his prize...
...That decision and the reasons for it sound the most bitter note in an extraordinarily bitter and pessimistic book...
...At United Lymphomilloid, children like Barry are trained (by being deprived of their previous knowledge, physical senses, and reproductive capabilities) to work on the top-secret "Fifty-Year Project...
...It would be a pity to reveal the nature of all those moves and counter-moves, where Hersey's unsuspected powers of invention have full play...
...Jones on his collapsible motorcycle, his attempts to buy the boy, and the boy's attempts to counter him...
...Jim Kirkwood's novel There Must Be A Pony (Little, Brown, $4) is in an entirely different mode...
...Caught up in the life of a wealthy New York Catholic family, young Henry Adams (who bears a disturbing resemblance to Mr...
...In The Child Buyer, Hersey's targets are all those forces that dehumanize and sterilize the individual in the name of some higher good—national defense or the free enterprise system or what have you...
...It is the story of Liz Buckley, a "nice" girl whose romance with a young "tough" and involvement in the life of a big-city slum transforms her into a warm and free woman...
...It is, as the subtitle so conveniently informs us, "A novel in the form of hearings before the Standing Committee on Education, Welfare 8c Public Morality of a certain State Senate, investigating the conspiracy of Mr...
...In themes and in style her novel is reminiscent of the film On the Waterfront...
...Gradually the situation is reconstructed: the arrival of Mr...
...The arrival of Mr...
...The author's main point, it would seem, is that talent has become a commodity, which we are only too willing to buy and sell...
...actually he goes from silly bore to pompous bore...
...There's a great deal of talk in this book about Evil and other capital-letter concepts but it is so garbled and confused that one's only hope is that the author of it all will spend the next ten years reading, not writing, books...
...Said male child is one Barry Rudd, a fat, awkward New England schoolboy whose superior intelligence brought him to the attention of Wissey Jones, representative of the United Lymphomilloid Corp...
...Of all the literary forms, the one treated most kindly by the reviewers is the first novel, usually a thinly disguised autobiography posing as a novel of education...
...The phenomenon of stupidity in high places, however, would hardly sustain a full-length novel, even one so compact as this...
...Hersey fires from near on at American education and local government...
...Still, there are enough twists in the plot and turns in the prose to hold the reader's interest right to the end...
...The hero talks and acts like Holden Caulfield, but the author lacks the grasp of the material and of the language that makes Salinger's work so extraordinary...
...And once talent is accepted as a commodity, labor is divided, so that each person addresses himself to only one small part of a job, with all the parts coordinated by a "manager," who is the only one who knows all the parts and how they fit together...
...The boy's protectors are bought off one by one until, ultimately, the decision rests with him alone...
...Winks) observes corruptible and corrupting innocence...
...The best of the lot is The Skinner (New Authors Guild, $3.75) by Jay Gilbert, a young woman who was born in Northern Rhodesia, studied and worked in Dublin, and now lives in London...
...Jones and subsequent events in the town of Pequot are investigated by the state senate committee, which hears the testimony of all the principals of the case—the buyer, the boy, his parents, the school officials...
...Fifteen-year-old Josh Cydney and his movie-actress mother are made the principals in a nationwide scandal by the violent death of Ben Nichols, Rita Cydney's current lover and the only one to take an interest in her son...
...Wissey Jones, with others, to purchase a male child...
...Its scarcity induces those who want it to abandon all human values to acquire it and induces those who control it to do likewise to exploit it for their own advantage...
...Placing the individual and his unique powers of creation above the immediate interests of the community, Hersey makes an eloquent plea for the preservation of individuality and the encouragement of personal achievement...
Vol. 24 • December 1960 • No. 12
