TO WALK THE LINE

by David Quammen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1970

When John Scully leaves Yale early to spend the summer in the black section of Chicago his parents wonder what he's ""mixed up"" or ""involved"" in. What this all goes to show is that Scully is just mixed up and Tyrone, a black boy with a rampantly troublemaking record, is the first to spot that Scully isn't really involved--he's just a ""white dude"" or the ""book,"" the kind of boy who when asked who he is answers ""I wish I knew."" In fact Scully doesn't really belong there at all, working with a vague grey outfit called the Operation and the potential victim of the violence programmed for the end of the long hot summer. Along with the hostility there's the gentler underside of the teasing-taunting relationship between Tyrone and the defenseless Scully to whom the whole ""politics of confrontation"" is really an abstraction which escapes him, and which he escapes without ever having really been there. . . . Quammen seems to be as young as Scully and his first novel is as marginal as the title; one has long since learned that it's no longer great to be young but it is rapidly becoming apparent that it's not enough to be young and articulate. Even if by the close Quammen will have exposed some of the more vulnerable and shadowy areas which exist between ""white is right"" and black is beautiful.

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION