Wilt Thou Torchy

Sewell Ford's "Wilt Thou Torchy" captures the manic energy of young adulthood in early twentieth-century New York. Our hero Torchy Ballard, armed with more enthusiasm than sense, serves as private secretary by day and social catastrophe by night. When he isn't bungling romantic entanglements with Vee, enduring his Auntie's disapproving scrutiny, or reuniting with improbable former acquaintances at the theater, he's dispatching witty commentary on the absurdities of modern life. Ford's prose crackles with period slang and the rapid-fire exchanges of a comic novel that understands exactly how ridiculous young people sound trying to seem sophisticated. The setup is simple: watch Torchy fumble through a group outing to the theater while juggling relationships, misunderstandings, and his own pretensions. What elevates this beyond period piece is Torchy's narratorial voice self-aware, likably vain, and perpetually slightly out of his depth. It endures because the specific humiliations of being twenty-something never really change, only the technology.