THE WELL OF THE PAST

A familiar enough theme- of a poet trying to find himself and passing through all the well-trodden circles in order to do so. David Gerald runs the gamut of being in love with his mother, going to school, making love at fifteen, taking a sea voyage in the Mansfield stage, reading James Joyce, setting up for a bit at a New York university where he receives the moral and financial support of a professor, and finally ending up in Greenwich Village to Live. And there is one last stab as he takes off for Paris to swoon on the Left Bank and to eye Picasso. A matter of Bohemia and one damm woman after another. Some good creative writing on the descriptive level, but on the conversational, there is some that is wretched.