Bugs and Veronica

THE STORIES: BUGS. As Harry Gilroy of the New York Times describes the author's handling: He starts with the living room of a plain little house, brightened with careful housekeeping and with the presence, in blushing pink curlers and dress of the lady of the house. Then her blundering son comes home from the 'school'-really a correctional institution where he has been put for accidentally shoving a woman off a bridge, although he dived in vain to save her. The young man is obsessed with bugs, 'huge big bugs,' that always come at him just when he is trying to think big things about God or something. His mother and a pitiful weak flower of a girl want to help him. His father, fanatically devoted to his beer and newspaper when he comes home from the soul-destroying job in a factory, never notices him. At the end a social worker comes to take the young man back to his school. The mother and girl go to the church that gives them the only hope there is in life. The father impotently circles the room in a raging cry for freedom from all nuisances and finally hurls himself on a couch in a kind of apoplectic fit that will one day, certainly, carry him off. (2 men, 3 women.) VERONICA. As outlined by the New York Journal-American: ...[VERONICA] has to do with the problems of two Tin Pan Alley types, Lou Long and Leo Lane who have been writing songs for seventeen years, but whose inspiration has run dry. Lou, the lyric writer, has married an intellectual girl who thinks the stuff they write is drivel and we're afraid she's right. They haven't had a hit since the marriage and are trying to get back into the groove that enabled them to produce their biggest hit, 'Veronica,' a cornball if ever there was one. They are ensconced in an apartment in an upper-Broadway hotel and have only $7,000 left in the bank after all their good years. Sharing the suite are a song plugger and a scantily clad, leggy blonde who is their 'inspiration.' She is an ex-cocktail waitress who is studying French on the side to improve herself. When all seems lost and Lou is left alone brooding about 'the bomb' which he claims is the cause of his loss of ideas, an engaging robber breaks into the place and encourages him to get down to work again. When the others return they manage to complete something like 'On an Island with a Girl Like You,' which fortunately lends itself to rock 'n' roll, and the burglar and the inspiration are doing the twist to it by the end. (4 men, 1 woman.)White, John, Jr. is the author of 'Bugs and Veronica ', published 1966 under ISBN 9780822201618 and ISBN 0822201615.