Run Softly, Go Fast

by Barbara Wersba

This is the diary kept by nineteen-year-old David which he hoped might help him analyze the strange relationship between himself and his father.

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Barbara Wersba was born in Chicago, moved to California, and then to New York City. She attended Bard College, and after graduating returned to Greenwich Village to study acting with Paul Mann. She received an honorary doctorate from Bard. In 1994, Wersba founded The Bookman Press, a small-press publishing company. She lives in Sag Harbor, New York.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the first half of the book I was highly resistant. It seemed so firmly situated in the 1960s, not only in content (loopy descriptions of acid trips, musings on how God must be a "dropout") but in style (a Holden Caulfield with extra hippie angst), that it seemed badly dated. By the time I was finishing the novel, I was daydreaming about Lizzie Skurnick recovering it from obscurity and making it part of her imprint (http://lizzieskurnickbooks.com/ - very, very cool). It's an incredibly poignant and ultimately simple story of a young man coming to terms with his rocky relationship with his father. While the book seems very loosely structured, rambling between past and present in a seemingly scattershot way, Wersba has everything under control and as the novel winds on she revisits earlier scenes, bringing in additional details that subtly transform the meaning. Just as you're getting fed up with the narrator and his relentless bitterness against his father, Wersba subverts his perspective and finds ways to illuminate the limitations of his incomplete maturity while staying entirely within his point of view. I admired it as literature, and also felt a powerful urge to call my parents and let them know I loved them.

[Edy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strong story deftly written. After his father's death, the main character attempts to analyze his feelings for his father and how their relationship went awry. The novel results from these self-introspection sessions. As David, the main character, writes, the themes of alienation and conflict with his father, and to a lesser extent his mother, unfold. The characterization of Leo, David's father, is complex. The language of the book is harsh and extremely strong. In some incidents, I felt that the subject matter would have been much more intense if it had been enclosed in a different choice of words. I did not feel and emotional involvement with the happenings of David. The author, nonetheless, has created a realistic novel of a boy wandering through adolescence, attempting to develop a self unencumbered by the demands of his father.

I read this novel and wrote this review in the mid-70s when I was taking an adolescent lit. class.

[Gary Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This truly is a fantastic book.
It's too bad it has been out of print for years.