What do you think?
Rate this book
Bad Boy
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 4, 2023
It seems that Schiddel is remembered as someone who cranked out a lot of pulp fiction, a lot of it borderline pornographic (and the dust jacket of this one promises more of the same), but if Bad Boy is representative of his talents, his memory deserves better.
Philip Tenys Hanway is in psychiatric custody pending a determination as to whether to try him for for the murder of his parents; the novel is an account of his coming to terms with his past as his doctor prods him to write as a form of therapy/discovery. One gets the impression that the resulting series of inner monologues tracks closely the writing he does without necessarily being identical to that writing; a reader might find this confusing at times. The resulting portrait is, well, mostly convincing. Philip is the unloved child of a loveless marriage: ice-queen mother who edits a fashion magazine; furtively homosexual father who married for the sake of inheritance, the terms of which included the production (achieved with -- I kid you not -- turkey baster) and successful rearing of a child. Needless to say this all sounds like a field trip for a Freudian psychiatrist, and part of the tension of the novel results from Philip's jaundiced view of the profession as it is wielded on him. Unfortunately Schiddel seems to have been a bit too much of a Freudian himself, and the climactic scene (which, no, I'm not going to spoil) relies too heavily on Freudian paradigms to come off as wholly convincing. So no fifth star for this one.
But a lot comes off strikingly well. Schiddel handles Philip's relationships with his father and his best friend Renzo, neither of which is entirely free of sexual tension, with considerable subtlety; his knowledge of the tearoom scene betrays at least a thorough familiarity with the work of Laud Humphreys -- if not with tearooms themselves -- and his understanding of the psychology of straight trade is good enough to merit a blurb from Hubert Selby, Jr., regardless of the fact that Selby was much too generous with his blurbs. Schiddel's depiction of Philip's experiences as soldier and POW during the Vietnam War -- by far the longest section in the novel -- likewise rings devastatingly true.
Maybe Bad Boy should rate only 3 stars, but I have a soft spot for good books that have been unjustly consigned to oblivion.
Philip Tenys Hanway is in psychiatric custody pending a determination as to whether to try him for for the murder of his parents; the novel is an account of his coming to terms with his past as his doctor prods him to write as a form of therapy/discovery. One gets the impression that the resulting series of inner monologues tracks closely the writing he does without necessarily being identical to that writing; a reader might find this confusing at times. The resulting portrait is, well, mostly convincing. Philip is the unloved child of a loveless marriage: ice-queen mother who edits a fashion magazine; furtively homosexual father who married for the sake of inheritance, the terms of which included the production (achieved with -- I kid you not -- turkey baster) and successful rearing of a child. Needless to say this all sounds like a field trip for a Freudian psychiatrist, and part of the tension of the novel results from Philip's jaundiced view of the profession as it is wielded on him. Unfortunately Schiddel seems to have been a bit too much of a Freudian himself, and the climactic scene (which, no, I'm not going to spoil) relies too heavily on Freudian paradigms to come off as wholly convincing. So no fifth star for this one.
But a lot comes off strikingly well. Schiddel handles Philip's relationships with his father and his best friend Renzo, neither of which is entirely free of sexual tension, with considerable subtlety; his knowledge of the tearoom scene betrays at least a thorough familiarity with the work of Laud Humphreys -- if not with tearooms themselves -- and his understanding of the psychology of straight trade is good enough to merit a blurb from Hubert Selby, Jr., regardless of the fact that Selby was much too generous with his blurbs. Schiddel's depiction of Philip's experiences as soldier and POW during the Vietnam War -- by far the longest section in the novel -- likewise rings devastatingly true.
Maybe Bad Boy should rate only 3 stars, but I have a soft spot for good books that have been unjustly consigned to oblivion.
Displaying 1 of 1 review