Books in Brief: Each Other’s Victims

Each Other’s Victims, by Mil ton Travers (Scribner’s, 128 pp., $5.95). This is a strange, sad book. It is the story of a New York father who finds his eighteen-yearold son is on drugs and what he tries to do about it. Like most true narratives, this book must be judged on two levels. On the first, the general, it is evcellent journalism. The author is a perceptivn cicerone through the junkie pads of the East Village, capturing the boring squalor of the neighborohood and the mind-contratcing culture of its people. At its best, it reads like Zola—competent, solid Naturalism. However, on the personal level, when Travers tries to extract personal tragedy from collective misfortune, the book grows limp. While Sonny blows his mind on drugs, Pappa anaesthetizes his with vodka. Both are the end products of a particularly rancid type of philosophy the mindless subjectivism so fashionably today. As the title suggests, Each Other’s Victims is gummy with reciprocal, collective guilt. And rightly so. Travers (apseudonym, by the way) is an author by trade and, like any good money writer, he feeds his personal experiences through his typewriter. In this case, it comes out painfully honest. But, after the book is read, rather than compassion, what’s left is a kind of clinical sociology. However, the author does give very useful information on the drug scene (all ammunition is valuable for the concerned parent) and the book should certainly be read for that alone.

JK

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Jack D. Kirwan

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Each Other’s Victims, by Mil ton Travers (Scribner’s, 128 pp., $5.95). This is a strange, sad book. It is the story of a New York father who finds his eighteen-yearold son is on drugs and what he tries to do about it. Like most true narratives, this book must be judged on two levels. On the first, the general, it is evcellent journalism. The author is a perceptivn cicerone through the junkie pads of the East Village, capturing the boring squalor of the neighborohood and the mind-contratcing culture of its people. At its best, it reads like Zola—competent, solid Naturalism. However, on the personal level, when Travers tries to extract personal tragedy from collective misfortune, the book grows limp. While Sonny blows his mind on drugs, Pappa anaesthetizes his with vodka. Both are the end products of a particularly rancid type of philosophy the mindless subjectivism so fashionably today. As the title suggests, Each Other’s Victims is gummy with reciprocal, collective guilt. And rightly so. Travers (apseudonym, by the way) is an author by trade and, like any good money writer, he feeds his personal experiences through his typewriter. In this case, it comes out painfully honest. But, after the book is read, rather than compassion, what’s left is a kind of clinical sociology. However, the author does give very useful information on the drug scene (all ammunition is valuable for the concerned parent) and the book should certainly be read for that alone.