Kevvy

About the Book

The novel Kevvy begins in the year 2084 in an isolated city grown from the ruins of global nuclear war, where marriage is forbidden. The Historian, the first of the three parts or “books” of Kevvy is the story of two students, Suette and Paul, who after seduction and abandonment come back together, and secretly attempt a lifelong marriage. The City also promotes science, and thus the discovery at the university of how to intrude into history, altering selected events. The married lovers fall afoul of both the research and the prevailing mores. Suette’s mother Alice was once secretary to Joseph, the Historian, an elderly academic who won a Nobel Prize in his youth before the nuclear war. The key events later derive from his historical research, hence the name of the first part of the novel. Alice has requested a brief autobiography from him, and his description of his life and work enriches the story. The Wolves and The Man, the following parts of the novel are about how Kevvy, the little boy left alone, grows up, mostly as a street urchin. He makes a close friend on whom he bestows the name Boy, and gathers a clan around him called the Wolves. (The gamin animal monikers are a feature of the story.) Later come his difficult but successful marriage, and his intervention into the continuing science. The novel provides ideas and value exploration for the thoughtful, yet adventure, science fiction, sex, and romance for folks after a good yarn. There is lots of dialogue, thoughtful, angry, intimate, and funny in turn. The beginning date and the presence of a Party invite comparison with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the Orwell sexual love is forbidden, whereas here marriage is forbidden, and sex encouraged but trivialized. Without prejudice to the greatness of Orwell’s vision, this version seems more likely in the year 2000. There’s a sly reference back to the Orwell right at the end of Kevvy. There are minor but specific references to other literature too. Other features are the association of a Nobel Prizewinner with a denunciation of science; futuristic technologies, especially the “writers,” portable personal computers, carried by Party law, which double as telephones; promotion of liberal education; a political setup which cannot address social problems; and the specter of children living wild and alone. The Man includes a statement on abortion. The city, ravaged with radiogenic disease, provides a cautionary background of destructive science which has already happened. But the main topic is character: Paul has a wrestler’s physique, good mathematical ability, and hypnotic eyes. Suette is petite, with long black hair. She’s a nurse, and resourceful and single-minded over what is important to her. They invest immense energy in their marriage. Paul’s student friend and confidant, Bryce, can express shock but never opposition to Paul’s more hair-raising activities. He talks well, but Paul always dominates. He faces a Party investigation of an overlong relationship with a former girl friend. In The Wolves Kevvy develops intellectual interests and superior powers of leadership. At fourteen he gets himself accepted at school. The clan’s chief business is however food scavenging, shop-lifting, and physical defense. They acquire two girls, Karen and Flower. Kevvy also induces the clan to take on care of four younger gamin boys. Among them, Sharp has formidable repartee, and is often violent. Chippy, much younger, is quiet, and with an acute sense of right and wrong. Kevvy grows to resemble his father, though more cautious, and more dependable. Karen, his wife, is a red-haired beauty, willfully independent, but deeply frightened by the gamin world. Interspersed in the story are glimpses of the wider context of the isolated City between the hills, centered on certain Councilors; on Gillian, a librarian for a law partnership, who impresses Boy; and Diane, once Suette’s roommate at the University, an

About the Author

John A. White has been a professor of science, technology, and society (STS). Trained in chemistry, he also has interests in literature, history, and Renaissance music. Raised in England, he has lived in Rochester, NY for many years. He is widowed and has two children. He is author of “Values and Scientists,” University Press of America, 1983 (non-fiction), and various articles. Some of the thinking in this book overflows into his first novel Kevvy, where the characters struggle with the ambiguities in any value conflict, and with sometimes disastrous results. Beware, the author is something of an iconoclast and asker of questions.