"From Henry Murray, I learned something of the enriching complexity of human needs and Imagination; Riesman increased my understanding of the power of social setting and social pressure to shape men's character and dreams; from Erikson, I gained greater insight into the interweaving of the developmental, the social, and the historical."

Clearly nobody has taught Keniston how to write. This deficiency would not be so serious if Keniston were an economist, historian, or even a psychologist of ordinary pretensions. But it seems that he would imitate his teachers, that he aspires to the position of free-lance social scientist, unfettered by the disciplinary distinctions usually imposed by the Academy. While the ambition is an hororable one, the plodding prose of The Uncommitted suggests that Keniston may not be the right man for the job--at least not at the age of 35.

Nowhere but in the writing of fiction is a literary sense as important as it is in the writing of generalized social science like The Uncommitted. But where it is important to amplify or explicate a thought, Keniston merely repeats it. In his chapter on "Chronic Change and the Cult of the Present," he argues that the dynamism of our culture and technology make it unwise to settle on a permanent personal orientation. Then he echos this thought twice in succeeding paragraphs (illustrating not only his habit of repeating himself, but also his penchant for listing nearly synonymous adjectives in series):

"Partly because of the pace of social change, identifications must be cautious, selective, partial, and incomplete."

"Replacing the more total identifications of the past are ever more partial, selective, and incomplete identifications."

The padded term paper has become the padded book.

Repetitiveness is also writ large in The Uncommitted; Keniston repeats chapters as well as sentences. He has evidently taken the hoary Gen. Ed. A dictum to heart: say what you plan to say; say it; say what you've said. This technique puffs up what ought to be a modest essay into a 500 page book, plus a separate monograph, The Alienated Student, as yet unpublished.

Accepting Keniston's premises and analyses--the sureness of his observations and the permanence of his subjects' uncommitment--what remedy does he prescribe? He urges the unleashing of the utopian impulse. "What is needed is to free that impulse once again, to redirect it toward the creation of a better society. We too often attempt to patch up our threadbare values and outworn purposes; we too rarely dare imagine a society radically different from our own." This moralism has become a commonplace in recent political thought, as has the demonstration that it is unlikely to occur. It is as fatuous to exhort intellectuals to think in utopian terms as it would be to encourage alienated students to embrace a commitment. Imagination is no substitute for experience, and until Keniston tries a little utopian theorizing himself, he can't expect his gratuitous advice to be taken seriously