CLEAN YOUNG ENGLISHMAN

by John Gale ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 1966

This is the autobiography of a man with all the right ideas and acceptable public notions who, in his early thirties, went mad. Other men have faced far more shocking experiences than Gale has, and have not gone mad. But his is a peculiarly lucid and precise intelligence--even lyric--, he seems disastrously sane in an insane world...After a protracted virginity (until 23), service as an officer in the Coldstream Guard and in North Africa during WWII, Gale returned to England to become a journalist. At 25 he married a dancer with whom he'd been infatuated as a child. They have three children. Gale's editor sent him to cover the Algerian uprising, where he observed great barbarity and wrote a series damning the French. At Suez, during the nationalization of the canal, he became disillusioned about Britain. Gale gradually discovered that he was unable to express himself about Algeria and he came to believe that he was being drugged. A trip to the States ended in a breakdown and, once home in England, he was committed. Gale uses no headshrinker's jargon, nor does he dwell upon electrotherapy. Cleanly to the point, this is about a modern young man looking at the world and quietly going crackers. It is an artful, estimable, reasonable book, worth reading, but unlikely to find the audience it merits.

Pub Date: May 23, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward-McCann

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1966

Categories: NONFICTION