Chapter 1, Love (Puberty) Summary and Analysis

Due to a nervous system affliction called St. Vitus Dance, Andy spends much of a sickly childhood in bed with paper dolls. Andy does not see much of his Czechoslovakian father, employed by the coal mines, and Andy's major childhood influence is his mother. As a teenager, Andy finds summer employment at a department store and idolizes his boss who comes from New York. The lure of New York in the 1950s is strong and Andy moves to the big city when he is eighteen.

Andy moves into an Art Commune of sorts with seventeen other young people, but Andy does not form any real attachments to any of them and feels alienated in his new life. Andy determines to become a loner and realizes that this shift in his persona seems to draw people to him...