ROSSCOMMON

The author of R.F.D. makes a stab at his conception of Utopia in a singularly oblique novel. His Utopia grows out of the shattered brain of a man who has failed at life, and who was seeking -- through an imaginary revitalization of an ancestral farm, to rescue something from his own shipwreck. He populates his communal farm with several generations of the family that had petered out, he adds other derelicts and other constructive factors, but all seeking something that life had failed to give them. The plan is outlined, now with an aura of fantasy, now of straight fiction -- H. G. Wellsian, perhaps. The ideal community, with education covering the entire span of life with cooperative farming and marketing and living, incorporates a whole social philosophy. The plan, as outlined, is the last gesture made by a man who has given up all he holds dear, and from whom this much is salvaged as he goes over the brink. A story within a frame --and not quite resolved nor clarified.