HUCK JONES: A Novel of a Pre-Teenage Boy.

By Marcellus N. Joslyn '24. New York:Exposition Press, 195 J. 274 pp. $3-50.

The opening statement in the preface that "There seem to be very few novels about pre-teen boys. Perhaps there is room for another.", is a most modest and true comment. (We have many more case studies in our clinical literature.) The publisher's prediction that "Huck Jones stands a good chance of becoming as popular as . . . Penrod is unfair to the author whose stories can stand on their own merit. Surely I will make no predictions; only two comments.

First of all, "The personality of a pre-teen boy is very hard to capture," as my classmate says. He went back to his own youth for the hero - possibly autobiographically in spots - rather than risk portraying "a present-day lad." The episodes — as such - ring true to me, either as a casual-adult-reader or as a psychologist dealing with several Hucks.

Secondly, the fitting of authentic episodes into a novel was (for me, at least) not such a happy matter. I found myself too aware of the mechanics of writing: the final sentences in some chapters ("In the next chapter, we shall see . . ."), the fairly frequent and long asides (such as explaining the details of Poker, Red Dog, etc. when Huck was learning) and philosophizing; and the switch back and forth from kid talk to a vocabulary of a sophisticated adult was unhappy. In other words, the writing sometimes gets in the way of the story - for me.

Who will enjoy this book? Marcellus Joslyn hopes it will be young people, but also that it will amuse older people too. I enjoyed it, reading a few chapters at a time: especially the nostalgic one (of our own 1921-2-3-4 springs) wherein Huck discovers that tobacco juice can create a fairly good case of school-escaping "pink-eye." There is little, perhaps, of the sweep of Mark Twain or Booth Tarkington, but I was quite content with the book as I found it, my criticisms above to the contrary notwithstanding.