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THE FARM by

THE FARM

By

Pub Date: April 18th, 1967
Publisher: Crown

Mr. Cooper's previous novel, The Scene (not reviewed here) projected the experiences of a junkie. This one may pick up where the other left off. The Farm is a rehabilitation center for convicted addicts, a semi-Synanon behind bars, and a very unusual place indeed. For one thing it's almost integrated...the ladies and gentlemen encouraged to keep in contact and it seems relatively easy for our anti-hero to finally make it with Sonja with the ""young whore's face."" But it does take three quarters of the novel because he is usually on or remembering a high and indulging in what the psychiatrist questions as ""hip semantics."" We would question it too; not the plantation and/or ghetto gutteral that he, a Negro, uses which has an authentic ring but the disconcerting style of presentation: ""I crept from 1 side to the other, looking at the preposterous junkie- faces, mottled and drab and touched under the skin by the dirty finger-tips of stuff..."" It's doped out in sex passages with a running current of homosexuality. The narrator does more or less find himself through his love for Sonja but it's predictive, and whether or not you'll want to read it depends on your addict-tude.