Word: ellson
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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TOMBOY (215 pp.) - Hal Ellson -Scribner...
...That Stuff." This is the gruesome world of Tomboy, a novel with the stiff and one-dimensional authenticity of a social worker's report. Every incident in the book, says Author Ellson, is true, based on material he collected while working as a "recreational therapist" with young delinquents in New York City...
...center of Ellson's novel stands Tomboy, the leader of the girl Harps. On the surface she is hard and violent, able to beat up many of the boys in the gang, slick at robbery and negotiating with fences. Actually, she is a confused and wounded child. She hates her home because her father drinks and her stepmother scolds. She resents being a girl, she mistreats the other girls when they attract the boys, she scorns love movies because "that stuff gets me sick all the time...
Miniature Mobsters. Despite its fascinating subject, Tomboy is no great shakes as a novel. Its surface action is credible enough, but when Therapist-Novelist Ellson tries to explain what makes his little hoodlums run, he is much too pat and predictable. Unlike such other slum novelists as James T. Farrell (Studs Lonigan) and Nelson Algren (The Man with the Golden Arm), he lacks the gift for individualizing his miniature mobsters and thereby arousing sympathy for them. The chances are that Ellson, who is a better reporter than novelist, would have done just as well to turn his notes into...