HELIX,

By David Loughlin '43. Harper andBrothers, 1947; 242 pages; $2.50.

The most important question for each young man is: have you guts enough to com- pose a shape with meaning and charm from the confusing elements inside you and out- side? The most important question for so- ciety is: can the mechanisms that man invents be continually subordinated to the common good? And the most important question for a novelist is: can you entertain by showing possibilities of character and worth under the circumstances and within the conditions of everyday life?

Dave Loughlin's Helix is a slightly brash first book. It has the drawback of considerable technological detail which most readers will have to take on fuzzy faith. But it is a good book. It is a good book because its author has the rare courage to compose of his nature and circumstances a shape of meaning and charm. It is a good book because it shows a man in the act of establishing a creative and intelligent relation with a mechanism—the engines of a wartime cargo ship. And it is a good book because though concerned with a philosophy to accommodate the piston it is entertaining.

From page one to page 242, the language and the structure of the sentences assert an ironic and fearless readiness to take the fatal risks of responsibility without a precedent. But playfulness has no correlation with carelessness. Here is an author—a young authorwho dares to care.

The theme of Helix is freedom through the destruction of inadequate fictions and the concentration of the human spirit on practical domination of the machine. It reaffirms the faith that the spirit is greater than the machine by accepting the show-down. Though the novel ends in violent death, it provides a demonstration that the spirit can keep up the endless struggle.