GOING AWAY: A Report, A

by Claney Sigal ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 1961

The author's Weekend in to the contrary, this second novel reads like a young man's first an experimental spewing precipitated by twenty odd years of accumulated nausea, reverse peristalsis not hindered by concern with good form or, indeed, any form at all. The young narrator leaves his Hollywood career and hits the highway in a beat-up De Soto (we're given to understand that he does this between all existential entities) to motor through the United States in an attempt to find out what it is that has gone wrong with America (hypotipsis something has gone wrong) and why it is that he, a rebel, and others like himself no longer belong (assumption: there was a time when the rebel was ""in""). Everywhere there is confirmation: we are morally apathetic, we watch I Love Lucy with sterile there is either spleen or adjustment among retired rebels, everywhere everybody wants to get his foot in television's door. He visits old friends. Each visit brings back a chunk of the past. There was desertion from the army, the inevitable skids, Marklan salad days, McCarthian carnivorousness, etc. All this is accompanied by calls for help, transmitted over the car radio, from the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. Sigal is undeniably a powerful man with the word. But the power is only very spotty here. More beer cans by a rutty, monotonous highway.

Pub Date: Jan. 10, 1961

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1961

Categories: FICTION