Word: punch
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What is so moving about Punch Goes to Judy is not its political commentary: Punch's radicalism versus Keyes' questioning, sensitive but nonetheless rigid liberalism. It is not the description of the social situation they see, by now so predictably familiar. It is not even Punch's and Keyes' social commentary-descriptions of what Keyes calls the "prophylactic society," the picture of hate that confronts the two Boltons in the turnpike restaurant where they are forced to spend a snowy night, or the picture of Keyes' roommate, an Upper East Side, hairstyled, ankle-booted beautiful person who writes advertisements...
Keyes is alternately cocky and confused, cynical and lonely, but most of all questioning. He is the same kind of ingenuous character that Holden Caulfield was. His love for Punch, his great longing to understand her, makes the book come alive, makes it a book about individual people instead of mere social criticism. Keyes' position-caught between two generations-is similar to Caulfield's, but where Salinger's hero of the fifties wanted to spend his life at the edge of a cliff keeping the children from going over, Keyes, a hero of the seventies, finds himself dragged over...
...Punch is less effective as a character, a weakness in the book. What we see of her, for the most part, is a silent, violently angry, incommunicative and insensitive rebel. For a long while she won't speak with Keyes, and plots to get him out of the car. Only occasionally do we see the warmth, sensitivity, and compassion that move her. These scenes, when she breaks down and cries in fear to Keyes, when she talks of her boyfriends Regis, when she describes her unspeakable fear and horror when raped at gunpoint, are the finest in the novel...
...Since Punch is the moving force in the novel, the fact that she is for the most part silent and suspicious is disconcerting. We have come to expect our radicals to be militant, certainly, but polite. Here we are forced to understand the real nature of her character through Keyes' description of her as a child. He talks of the innocent wonder she once possessed, the love of life and the spirit that made her "the coolest Bolton alive," and we must rely on him, and a few occasional glimpses of this spirit and compassion, to believe in Punch. What...
...Punch Goes to Judy is the story of personal crises and personal fears. Keyes' transformation, his gradual awakening and increasing militance, along with his constant compassion and love, makes the book a dynamic force...