Morgantown: Difficulty at the Beginning: Book Two

Maillard writes in an early-1960's style about an early-1960's college student in West Virginia. He captures the mood of the times, as the main character grapples with Buddhism, existentialism, authentic folk music, and the various women in his life. The story is gripping the whole way, particularly the final manic episode. Prepare to be immersed in the clothing, speech patterns, and intellectual life of this late-beatnik, pre-hippie period.

I will review each of Keith Maillard's volumes in his quartet, Difficulty at the Beginning, of which this is the second. The first was Running. The books, which really comprise a single novel in four segments, follow John Dupre through the early 1960s, from his efforts to run the mile as a military academy student in Raysburg, Virginia, to this, the account of his college career at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Maillard always writes extremely well about music (read his incredible Clarinet Polka for an example), and this book is no exception, as he shows us John Dupre carving out a style for himself during the pre-Dylan folk revival. Dupre follows the trends of the day in those trends' advance guard, from Buddhist exploration to the SDS. His fascination with a certain type of girl, and his inability to follow through on his interests, results in a character with breadth and depth--a character who, though we are not quite sure why we should, we root for. I'm already digging into book three, Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes, and will continue my serial review of this serial novel when I'm done!