THE YOUNG DOGS

by Claude Faux ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 26, 1961

A rather hopelessly realistic novel- in translation from the French by Tony White- spends a weekend in a small t.b. sanatorium for adolescent boys and young men where death is more real, life more pointless, and sex more urgent than in the world to which many of them will never return. During the three day interval, Villeneuve, somewhat older, an ex-Macquiard, has the relapse which will prove fatal; the three intellectuals, spoon fed by Sartre and Camus, fight their private demons-- Richier, wretched over his impotence, attempts to negate it with the matron, an old woman; Alvarez tries to summon up the courage to commit suicide; Marsan attends Villeneuve. There are others as well; Metadier, the new boy, submitted to a cruel, sexual initiation; the three Corsicans who cut loose; Doctor Leneble, himself reprieved from the disease which had taken his wife; etc., etc., and over and above the morbidity of the disease, there is the dispiriting moral climate of a young-old postwar generation... As such, it is clinical, literal, unsentimental, -forbidding virtues more apt to ensure respect rather than liking (or in some cases, approval).

Pub Date: June 26, 1961

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Appleton-Century-Crofts

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1961

Categories: FICTION