Tonto in Search of his Destiny, or, Whats in a Name?
” copyright 1978 by The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 5, 1978. Reviewed by James M. Cory. Tony Ardizzone’s first novel is a simple story of coming of age — of Tonto Schwartz’s growth into manhood in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side. It begins as a warm and anecdotal book about a boy growing up in the sixties — of baseball, Catholic education and paper routes; of the mysteries of liquor and sex; of friendships broken by war or the slow disintegration of mutual interests. In the Name of the Father is really two tales. In parts one and two, Ardizzone gives a funny, empathetic, even a nostalgic picture of Tonto’s boyhood. In parts three and four, Tonto is loosed to the dreary world of factory America in the sixties, undergoing that hardening process that unfortunately must accompany our entry into adulthood. The key to this novel’s odd title is found in the stranger name of its hero. Abraham Schwartz was a World War II veteran whose head was half blown away by an ar
