Young Adam by Alexander Trocchi

The notoriety of Alexander Trocchi rests on a slim body of work. His most famous novel Cain's Book, is a harrowing account of a heroin addict, and his first published novel Young Adam was hailed as a classic in France, and then banned.

Joe is a hired hand working a barge on the Scottish river Clyde, the grimy work of hauling granite chips and anthracite. He shares the tight lower quarters with his boss Leslie - a husky man grown soft with drink - his wife Ella, and their young son.

"It had come floating downstream, willowy, like a tangle of weeds. She was beautiful in a pale way - her body seemed to have given itself over to the water. Frightening and obscene at the same time." Joe used the boat hook, and Leslie hauled the corpse aboard. Was it suicide or murder?

Something awakened in Joe, and he began to see Ella in a new way - a heavy woman with strong buttocks straining her too-washed cotton dress while she hung laundry. She disliked him but did not resist when he stroked her thigh under the dining table. She is hungry as well, without caution, and a sexual affair begins. When her widowed sister Gwendoline visits, he sleeps with her as well.

This has been called a noir classic, yet although there is a body, a suspect, and a court case, this is not a mystery. Joe has an ambivalent morality and fails to feel guilt or persecution, even when he can save a man from a death sentence. For Joe knows who the girl was - his old girlfriend Cathie - whom he met the night she died. A Glasgow plumber is arrested, and Joe finds out she was pregnant when he attends the trial, the court fitting the evidence into a foregone conclusion.

Young Adam was rejected as too sexual to be published in English in 1954, but was praised in France under the pen name Frances Lengel. Not published under his own name (in America) until 1966, it was promoted as a "French banned sex classic."

Glasgow-born Trocchi was an unrepentant drug addict most of his life, and his work is on par with the beat writers (Kerouac, Burroughs, and I would add Hubert Selby Jr.). Living in New York, London and Paris he found a unique place amongst artists, including friend Leonard Cohen (who wrote the poem Alexander Trocchi, Public Junkie, Priez pour Nous), and Patti Smith ("When I find I'm having trouble writing, I just go back and read some of it and I always have to put it down because it always makes me want to write. His place is unique and will be revered.")

Young Adam was filmed in 2003 starring Ewan MacGregor and Tilda Swinton.

1954 / Tradeback / 160 pages