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Rock
"A frightening, moving and eloquent novel of the most disturbed - and disturbing -- generation this country has ever known." [From the back cover] To Max Fallon, his home-town was outwardly the same. But the old neighborhood was paralyzed with fear of a group of dangerous, young pre-adults, wild as jungle animals. They were led by a hard, beautiful girl, who deliberately outraged decency and morality, and by Fallon's own kid brother. "SHOCKING PICTURE OF TEEN-AGE DELINQUENTS, WITH THEIR TEN-WORD VOCABULARY, SWITCH KNIVES AND HOTRODS, WHO WILL STOP AT NOTHING - NOT EVEN MURDER!"
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
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March 25, 2025
Rock, Wagoner’s 1958 novel, once again features an out-of-place and awkward young man, Max Fallon, whose awkwardness reminds one of Ben Braddock from the 1963 novel, the Graduate, later played in 1967 by Dustin Hoffman. Max, here, should be a little older than Ben, having served in the Army and been married for three years. But Max now has a failed marriage and numerous failed careers behind him. He wanted out so bad he signed everything over to the wife and returned on a bus to his mid-western hometown to inhabit a bedroom in his parent’s home while trying to figure out what to do next.
Max is depressed and out of sorts. He tells his mother he does not have any brains at all. His brains, he says, are like jello when you leave it too long in the icebox. “He felt like a would-be suicide who had tied so many weights on himself that he couldn’t climb over the bridge railing.” Wagoner does so well at showing angst and depression. Max tells us at another point that he feels as if he is “inside, with the bugs and darkness, and somebody had shut the lid, shut it hard and fast. He walked, and didn’t like where he was.”
Max gets a job at the local city beach as a lifeguard based on his father’s city hall connections. Much of the story takes place on the beach as Max meets local characters there. He has a slightly awkward relationship with an older divorcee (Kate Morley Franklin) who has a young daughter, although his dinner date is cringe-worthy in his world of awkwardness as if he doesn’t think he really fits into this part. Indeed, when Max reveals his current philosophy on dating, it does not sound as if he is coming from a happy place. He says that people don’t love each other and, instead, “They jam their bodies together and stand around hoping for the worst. And they get it, and then they spend the rest of their lives boring each other to death with their hot insights about marriage being a trap, and women being bitches, and love being a bunch of baloney.”
The other side of the story is the changes that have come to this small town and indeed to just about every small town. The youth are wearing their hair long in ducktails and hanging out in clubs and in packs on the beach where they race hotrods. It is the dawning of the era of juvenile delinquency and Max is too old to be a part of it. To them, he is “daddy-O.” That is, until he crosses their limits by absconding with one of their girls (Della Kelso) and tossing her aside the next day.
Wagoner shows that he understands what motivates the juveniles. Max muses that his brother “Timmy and the kids in the hangout were like himself: they were in trouble and scarcely knew it. The air of boredom made them feel safer, hid the fear that was rattling around inside them like hornets in a can.”
The penultimate scene in the story is all the hot-rodders gathering late at night on the beach and taking on Max, who is all on by himself, and it is a vicious scene that would have played quite well as a movie scene had this been made into a movie. Until that final explosive scene, though, the novel often moves a bit slowly and you can feel Max’s sense of rootlessness and hopelessness and sadness.
Max is depressed and out of sorts. He tells his mother he does not have any brains at all. His brains, he says, are like jello when you leave it too long in the icebox. “He felt like a would-be suicide who had tied so many weights on himself that he couldn’t climb over the bridge railing.” Wagoner does so well at showing angst and depression. Max tells us at another point that he feels as if he is “inside, with the bugs and darkness, and somebody had shut the lid, shut it hard and fast. He walked, and didn’t like where he was.”
Max gets a job at the local city beach as a lifeguard based on his father’s city hall connections. Much of the story takes place on the beach as Max meets local characters there. He has a slightly awkward relationship with an older divorcee (Kate Morley Franklin) who has a young daughter, although his dinner date is cringe-worthy in his world of awkwardness as if he doesn’t think he really fits into this part. Indeed, when Max reveals his current philosophy on dating, it does not sound as if he is coming from a happy place. He says that people don’t love each other and, instead, “They jam their bodies together and stand around hoping for the worst. And they get it, and then they spend the rest of their lives boring each other to death with their hot insights about marriage being a trap, and women being bitches, and love being a bunch of baloney.”
The other side of the story is the changes that have come to this small town and indeed to just about every small town. The youth are wearing their hair long in ducktails and hanging out in clubs and in packs on the beach where they race hotrods. It is the dawning of the era of juvenile delinquency and Max is too old to be a part of it. To them, he is “daddy-O.” That is, until he crosses their limits by absconding with one of their girls (Della Kelso) and tossing her aside the next day.
Wagoner shows that he understands what motivates the juveniles. Max muses that his brother “Timmy and the kids in the hangout were like himself: they were in trouble and scarcely knew it. The air of boredom made them feel safer, hid the fear that was rattling around inside them like hornets in a can.”
The penultimate scene in the story is all the hot-rodders gathering late at night on the beach and taking on Max, who is all on by himself, and it is a vicious scene that would have played quite well as a movie scene had this been made into a movie. Until that final explosive scene, though, the novel often moves a bit slowly and you can feel Max’s sense of rootlessness and hopelessness and sadness.
Displaying 1 of 1 review