Solo

by Stanford Whitmore

Dust jacket blurb-The scene is and the central character, who dominates the book, is a young man of fierce, of a sort of bitterly self-conscious, integrity. This man, Virgil Jones, grows and develops before our eyes throughout the pages of a long, rich and extraordinarily dramatic and mere contact with him changes the lives of everyone of a big and highly individualised cast of leading characters. But he himself, though he grows and develops, does not essentially in the deeply moving and utterly unexpected last paragraph- in that dark room, totally deaf, and playing on a soundless piano - he is more himself than ever. The speed, the tenseness, the vitality of the writing are long though the book is, you "cannot put it down". And still we have said nothing about such scenes as the one in which a thug, hired by the power-crazed Paul, tries to smash Virgil's or about the beautiful love of Helen for or about the whole world of jazz-musicians and jazz-addicts, so expertly and so excitingly presented. But Virgil Jones is the we do not think, for our own part, that we shall ever forget him.

This is the first novel of a man in his twenties.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1956