Morgantown - Difficulty at the Beginning Author:Keith Maillard John Dupre, a junior at West Virginia University, is an English major on the Dean?s List dressed up as a Beatnik cowboy, the folk-singing "resident outsider" before nonconformity became a youth uniform.Morgantown is a masterful ensemble piece centering around John and peopled by his unforgettable friends in the "out crowd": Bill Cohen, th... more »e sharpshooting, knife-throwing Zen Buddhist Harvard scholar; Marge Levine, the political radical with the Nefertiti eyes; and William Revington, the scion of old money who has the world on a platter and can?t think of a single thing to do with it. And by his girl-friends and sexual obsessions: Carol Rabinowitz, the Wyatt scholar and Jewish American Princess; Natalie, the folk-singing boy-girl with the mind of a scientist; Cassandra Markapolous, whom John loves but is not allowed to be in love with.And then there?s the Alice in the photograph, the boy dressed up as a girl dressed up as another girl, on and on endlessly reflecting: a hall of mirrors that threatens to draw John into its vortex.« less