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HEYDAY by W. M. Spackman

HEYDAY

By

Pub Date: Feb. 16th, 1953
Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin-Ballantine

The hangover of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a little night music from the late 20's sounds the shrill torment of a lost generation heading out of Princeton and into the depression. Webb Fletcher some years later writes the obituary for a cousin, Mike, ""the headstone with a frieze of girls"" most of whom he'd shared. And the reflection in the mirror ends up by being largely his own;-of his marriage to Bar, who got seven years in a Pennsylvania prison for an accident in which she'd killed three children; of the teasing frustration of Kitty- who was having an affair with Steve- but who took time out here and there with Webb and Mike; and of the lovely satisfaction of Stephanie, who had first been Mike's, and then been all Webb's- until Bar's release which brings with it not only the constraint of Stephanie but also a Polish girl for whom Bar had forfeited an earlier parole...... The liberated impulse and bittersweet indulgence of the flesh, the recap here is certainly more biological than sociological- and probably as insistently erotic as anything outside of the Italian renaissance... For this reason, and in more ways than one, it is to be watched.