In 1947 a lawyer encourages a waitress in the Rosebud Diner in Davis Square to enroll her son in the Boston Latin School. Style Delaney, her son, attends Boston Latin for six years and is admitted to Harvard in 1954. In 1953 Style hooks school with Pete Simonelli and through Pete begins a friendship in a Boston poolroom with a gangster, Dancer Dugan, that eventually leads to full membership in Dancerâs gang. In one world in Cambridge at Harvard, Style studies Latin and Ancient Greek and searches for truth and beauty.
In another world in Charlestown, he works as a bookie at the seedy bar Dancer Dugan controls. Harvard Square is not far from Davis Square, Styleâs home, but in the 1950s the cultural gap between them was huge. In Davis Square, Style hangs out and drinks with friends who are mostly laborers and factory workers. In Harvard Square, he reads Ovid and Sophocles, Vergil and Plato and Homer, and seeks love and lofty relationships with beautiful college girls in rich surroundings. In 1957 in Paris, Style negotiates a heroin buy for his gang with a French gangster and at the same time the various beauties of Paris satisfy his aesthetic needs. During the same trip to Europe, he discovers in Italy the meaning of his classical studies among beautiful remains of the Roman Empire. The two worlds of Style Delaney never collide and he fi nds places in both to be himself.
