YOUR FATHER'S NOT COMING HOME ANYMORE"": Teenagers Tell How They Survive Divorce

A teenagers-interview-teenagers book--38 of the results are included--that purports to mirror the concerns and attitudes of middle-class children whose parents are divorced or divorcing. The Jacksons' method (if such it can be called) is to rap with friends and friends of friends, in the belief that their circle is ""normal"" and representative. If that's so, the middle class is an endangered species: there's hardly a kid interviewed here who doesn't tell tales of being thrown through glass doors or down stairs; combatting incest; being flogged by lead pipes; enduring the vagaries of alcoholic or drug-dependent parents; or escaping into the ""wastedness"" of coke, alcohol, what-have-you, themselves. Gone are the days, evidently, of my-parents-don't-understand-me. Now we come face to face with a generation of stoics who seem to understand and forgive mom and dad no matter what their volatile shortcomings. Self-sufficient and resourceful, they merely sigh as they move from one parent's abode to the other's, then out into the streets or in with friends: strength is their byword, superiority their game. Unfortunately, they all sound like insufferable prigs--whatever their withdt vocabularies--and the too-sympathetic, too unspecific interviewing by their peers doesn't help. If nothing else, this proves that those who empathize don't necessarily make the best interviewers--or choose the best subjects. Otherwise, it proves nothing.