THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701030626
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: RICKEY WRIGHT
LENGTH: 37 lines
INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN
KEVIN CANTY
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. 244 pp. $21.95.
Kenny Kolodny, the latest in a succession of would-be Holden Caulfields, is a high-schooler who surveys the world, stubs out his hand-rolled cigarette, and retorts, ``Huh?'' Throughout the short but interminable Into the Great Wide Open, Kenny dependably sneers at the world around him, while conspiring with creator Kevin Canty to refuse to perform any act that might betray a commitment to something beyond a pose. When the plot reaches its predictably bleak climax some 200 pages in, we're left to shrug as Kenny makes a half-hearted attempt at responding.
This isn't a coming-of-age story so much as it is a tale of a boy and girl who have had birthdays and will continue to. Even by the standards set by the likes of Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis, Canty's teen-agers - Kenny's love interest is a wispy aesthete named Junie - are maddening in their total, willful aimlessness. The author might as well never have lived among kids, for all he's able to bring to these.
Between muttering at each other and those around them, hero and heroine have sex in a number of imaginative locations. Hero skips class a lot, but is supposed to be brilliantly perceptive when he does stoop to attend English. Heroine is beautiful, yet droopy and sad.
``You want more suffering,'' petulant Kenny accuses petulant Junie near book's end. But Into the Great Wide Open, the title of a Tom Petty song, is actually hell-bent on causing us misery. Even the misanthropic 16-year-olds at whom it's apparently aimed will find it a bore.