in my heart I suspect Schiller is probablynright. When one considers the swollennranks of middle-class socialists andnGucci liberals, then mavbe there’s noth­nYouth’s Labors LostnDavid Holbrook: A Play of Passion;nW. H. Allen: London.nby Gordon Pradinrlas there ever been an adult whonat first blush did not wax nostalaic overnadolescence.’ We seem to have an endlessncapacity for such idealized retrospection.nYet when these reflectionsnare challenged, we readily admit to thenpain and suffering, the clumsy and awkwardnmoments, that actually characterizednthe series of passages precedingnadulthood. Indeed, it would be hard tondisagree with the extreme positionnShakespeare expresses in A Winter’snTale, “I would there were no age bentween ten and three and twenty, or thatnyouth would sleep out the rest. Fornthere is nothing in the between but gettingnwenches with child, wronging thenancientry, stealing, fighting.” Althoughnyouth might well have been a time ofnboundless possibility before our categoriesnfroze and “shades of the prisonhousenbegan to close upon the growingnboy,” essentially it was a time of thingsnonly half-known, the “blank misgivingsnof a creature moving about in worldsnnot realized.”nThe trials that an adolescent facesninvolve seeking answers to what itnmeans to be an adult, to what makes fornlife and what works against it. For thisnquest to be successful, for the agonynof youth not to be offered up in vain,nadolescents need an image of a coherentnadult world they can eventually mergenwith. They need a facilitating environ-nDr. Pradl teaches English Educationnat New York University, New YorknCity.n18 inChronicles of Culturening so remarkable about working-classnor bourgeois tories. And turnabout isnfair plav, after all. Pass the Stroh’s.nRabbi. ‘ nnment, one which fosters integrativensocial values, as they struggle to infusenmeaning into their probing relationshipsnwith the opposite sex, into theirnsearch for a fulfilling vocation, and intontheir desire for a creative interplay betweennself and community. Such arenthe ma)or themes the British poet andnnovelist, David Holbrook, takes up innhis latest novel, A Play of Passion, whichnchronicles the transitional seventeenthnyear in the life of Paul Grimmer whomnwe first met as a young tank officer innFlesh Wounds, (1966) Holbrook’s powerfulnand graphic recreation of eventsnsurrounding the D-Day invasion ofnNormandy.nxnAPlay of Passion the time is 1940,nthe place Norwich, an east coastal townnparticularly susceptible to the hostilitiesnthat have already broken out. Thus thendisintegrating social values which concernnHolbrook have their concrete analoguenin the missiles which nightlynthreaten the well-being of the city. PaulnGrimmer is completing his final yearnof school before going up to Cambridge,nbut his benevolent and progressive headmasternhas decided that at this particularnjuncture additional book-learning wouldnnot benefit him, so he has arranged fornPaul to work part-time at the MaddermarketnTheatre in Norwich. This opportunitynplaces Paul in the larger worldnof art and imagination, while providingnhim with new bearings as he beginsnshaping his identity, independent of hisnparents and free of the materialismnwhich clashes so with his youthfulnidealism.nPaul’s idealism grows out of his innernfeelings of communion with the ebb andnflow of the natural world, an at-onenessnnnHolbrook evokes for us early in thennovel as Paul is slowly gliding down anriver in a small rowboat.n”As he watched a shoal of very smallnfish all lying in the same direction,nand then suddenly all turning at once,nto face another direction, translucentnyellow, with a similar but distinctnmasking pattern on each back —henknew that he existed in a meaningfulnworld. He could not formulate anynmeaning in relation to if, nor did henstrive to . . , all belonged to a worldnthat went on, under the sun. flowingnand leaping and breathing, a slow unfoldingnand sweeping through thencurrent, which had its own rhythmnand purpose. And he t)elonged to it.’nYet from this calm center Paul goes onnto experience a range of conflictingnemotions. And it is Holbrook’s particularnstrength as a novelist to be able tonfaithfully render the complex relationshipsnthat Paul must sort through duringnthis troubled time. His parents, for instance,nfail to understand his fears andnambitions and violent disagreementsnensue, but their basic concern is revealednwhen they support him against annew maninet headmaster who is threateningnto revoke Paul’s association withnthe Maddermarket. Another relationshipnwhich confuses Paul is with Annie,nhis first girl. Although Annie awakensnfeelings of warmth and tenderness innPaul, she is unable to share his newlyndiscovered intellectual and cultural interests,nand thus at the end Paul is tornnbetween jealousy and relief when shengoes off to marry another.nYet such struggles seem the normalnfare of adolescence and should pose nonspecial difficulties for the novel’s protagonist.nHolbrook, however, has a morenpernicious drama in mind, namely thatnthe adult landscape, increasingly dominatednby the vacuous and trendy worldnof nihilistic culture and ideas, is failingnto offer youth viable role models. It isnthis state of affairs which threatens tonseduce Paul into false solutions to thenproblem of living, threatens to leavenhim in a void even as he works throughn