HORNSTEIN'S BOY

The earlier Anatomy of a Murder (1958) here becomes the anatomy of a senatorial campaign with 44 year old widower Walt Whitman Dressler narrating the sequences that persuaded him to run and the means by which he was elected. His curious friendship with Emil Hornstein of over twenty years earlier is revived when Hornstein seeks him out in the little town of Chippewa, carries him in to St. Lorraine to oppose the analgesic Martingale, and to do this, to upset Westlake, the liberal professor. Dressler is won by Hornstein's arguments against the modern malady of inertia and his demands to fight for a democracy "on trial for its life"; his first appearance in a Negro church brings colored Leon to work with them; the notorious reporter Sondelius becomes their enemy. After he has won the primary (and made a friend of Westlake) Walt goes on to woo the elusive electorate, finds his strength in the Negro and industrial vote, learns the power of the undergraduate, and, in spite of some missteps which give Sondelius material for vicious attacks, and even without Hornstein's and Leon's able assists, is able to walk away with the victory. Again there is the insistence on characters — Hornstein and his Bechstein, his composing and his idealism, Leon and his kaleidoscoping of Negro traits, the good guys and the bad guys (both of which can interchange), — the retreat to the out of doors and fishing, the upper mid-West scenery, and, here, the sense of immediacy applicable to today's current events — which should make this a stable mate of the earlier book.