Young Mr Keefe [antikvár]

YOUNG MR KEEFE Seen at a fashionable cocktail party in San Francisco, Jimmy Keefe might have been written off as another of those restless, rootless young men who have come of age since the Koreán War. Certainly California, like other states, has many like him - attractive, personable, even earnest fellows whose marriages nevertheless have failed, who drink too much, and who somehow have got lost along the way. But Mr Keefe is not 'just another' young man. Haunted by his loves and failures, desperately trying to find a meaning and purpose in his life, he is fiercely and unforgettably an individual. "Let's call it the Blazing Fifties," cried his best friend's wife Claire, aOur candle does more than burn at both ends - we toss the whole thing into the íire! . . . We're a generation that feels the world owes us a living, just because we're attractive!" Young Mr Keefe wondered, was it true that they were people with everything to oífer, yet who actually oífered nothing? At the back of his mind there was always his family in New England - they could supply him with a ready-made security - as well as a social position that he could never bring himself to accept. Since his separation from his wife he had spent more and more time with Blazer and Claire Gates, themselves New Englanders exiled in the wilds of California. At first they played as if they were in college together. But the pace became faster and the parties wilder; Claire was ready for new excitements, and Jimmy could feel her undeniable attractiveness.