I nRumble the conceptions of the characters are limited, and they lack the kind of psychological conflicts which create real empathy in the reader. Although Ellison may have intended the novel as a criticism of the social conditions which produce juvenile delinquents, the characters are too one-dimensional to evoke much sympathy.

Subsequently, however, Ellison tries to rework the same material in the fictionalized autobiography, Memos from Purgatory. And here his main problem as a writer emerges: He wants to write social criticism and fiction at the same time. Unfortunately, Memos from Purgatory fails to fuse these conflicting intentions into a convincing whole. On one hand, the autobiographical story in Memos from Purgatory has journalistic, sociological pretensions in its attempt to get the reader to empathize with the members of the street gang, but on the other it is an autobiographical story of the author himself, who for the...