This "marvelously funny book" exposes its narrator, the perverse and charming Hartspring--father, voyeur, teacher, war hero. The story--set in a fictional Yale--focuses on the wild feast from his office window of two young women in their dormitory girding their loins preparatory to a full frontal assault upon the World of Men. In a panorama of flashback, the chief figures in Hartspring's past emerge: mad Mag Durham from Alabama; Willy Gross, who engineers Hartspring's marriage; his drug-addicted father who "blows his mind" with a twelve-gauge shotgun, with a little help from his son; loyal Holman, who provides Hartspring's ultimate employment; his prize student, the brilliant and sinister Yolk; and, Docteur Petiot whose twin was guillotined for mass murder. Chthonic forces are astir beneath the genteel ivy façade. Shedding its baby teeth, Women's Liberation has adopted a "New Morality" with a fearsome bite. Even the staid New Criticism is up against the wall. Emerging from this lusty Crucible into a Brave New World of falling boundaries and fallen gods Hartspring stakes himself a path. "An offbeat, brilliant novel. It's dark and funny, and sometimes, way down sad." Mark Schorer "Lockridge writes with gusto and intelligence." Publisher's Weekly "There isn't a dull page in the whole book." Library Journal "In its way this is a sad tale indeed, yet if you were to open the book to any page, you would surely find that fact hard to believe. HARTSPRING is a marvelously funny book, joyously raunchy, infused with the spirit of wild bawdry that we associate with Rabelais, for along with the ribaldry, we are confronted with death, disease, and malignancy. They remind us as the great monk never failed to, of our mortality and of the transitory nature of all flesh--blond, brunet, or redhead."National Observer
