City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder
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| City Boy | |
| Author | Herman Wouk |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | General fiction |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Publication date | 1948, 1952, 1969 (Hardback), 1980, 1992 (Paperback) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
| Pages | 317 (1969 Hardback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-316-95511-6 (1992 Paperback edition) |
City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder is a 1948 novel by Herman Wouk. The second novel written by Wouk, City Boy was largely ignored by the reading public until the success of The Caine Mutiny resurrected interest in Wouk's writing. Like The Caine Mutiny, the novel is semi-autobiographical in setting and situations, if not protagonist. In 1969 the novel was re-issued, and in 1980 and 1992 published in paperback, and according to its author, translated into eleven languages. John P. Marquand, in a preface to the 1969 twentieth anniversary release, likened Herbie Bookbinder to a city-dwelling Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer.
In many of his novels Wouk evinces through his characters a love of Dickens, particularly in use of language to set mood. In City Boy he devises humorous twists of language to set a less-than-serious tone throughout this coming-of-age story. Also like Dickens, Wouk expertly manages a large cast of characters, including more than a dozen adults (and a one-of-a-kind horse named Clever Sam) woven in-and-out of a narrative about children, with depictions that ring true both in description and actions.
Set in the spring and summer of 1928, City Boy spins the tale of an 11-year-old Jewish boy in the Bronx, New York. The novel first follows Herbert Bookbinder through the final days of school at New York Public School 50, and then through a summer spent at Camp Manitou, a summer camp in the Berkshire Mountains operated by his school's principal. Herbie's city world is one of endless daydreams and small urban pleasures: playing in empty lots, going to the movies on Saturday, arguing with friends around a forbidden campfire, eating "fraps" (frappés) in Mr. Borowsky's candy store, and going out to eat at Golden's Restaurant.
Herbie is an exceptionally bright but fat little boy, a seventh grader and a star pupil. Although a poor athlete, Herbie yearns to be a "regular guy" among his schoolboy peers and constantly struggles against the consequences of his own quick wit and natural clumsiness with his rival, Lennie Krieger, the son of the business partner of Herbie's father, Jacob Bookbinder. Both blessed and cursed with a highly-active imagination, Herbie is also on the verge of adolescence, and the story revolves around his continuing quest to win the heart of the fickle, red-haired Lucille Glass.
Herbie, his parents, and his thirteen-year-old sister, Felicia, dwell in an aging Homer Avenue apartment house. Jacob Bookbinder is founder and part owner of an industrial ice-making plant, known to Herbie and his cousin Cliff Block as "The Place," a location that plays both a significant role in Herbie's fate and an adult sub-plot that frames the climax of the story.
Herbie contrives to have himself (and his sister, his cousin Cliff Block, and his rival Lennie) sent to Camp Manitou (run by the principal of P.S. 50, Mr. Gauss, as a source of summer income) when he learns that Lucille Glass will be there. The second half of the novel skewers the summer camp scene of the 1920's even as it sets up a succession of abject failures and spectacular successes for Herbie.
Herbie and Cliff contrive to burglarize "The Place" to finance a well-intended camp project, and that crime is the device by which all the sub-plots come together in Dickensian fashion, at a cost to Herbie's bottom if not his psyche. Wouk fashions a moral to the tale without preaching, but the boy's victory in the quest for Lucille proves tenuous at best.
