JOE COLLEGE
by Tom Perrotta

     I gathered from the acknowledgments that Tom got together with his old college buddies and reminisced about the "glory days"--college in the early eighties. College experience being universal, and universally unwriteaboutable, the book doesn't work. . 
     As with his other novels, this one takes place in New Jersey and Connecticut. The blue collar Jersey characters all listen to Bruce Springsteen and get into fights, which seemed contrived at first, but damned if that isn't exactly the way New Jersey was in 1981. In fact, that's the way it is right now.
     That is one good thing about the book. The first author to write the quintessential "college in the 90s" novel is more than likely going to omit wearing flannel shirts and listening to Nirvana, even though that is exactly what they were doing. Tom Perrotta, however owns up to his enjoyment (or anyone's enjoyment) of Rock Lobster. As ridiculous as it is, the song being a wedding reception staple, it's what college kids listened to in  1981. Right?
     He is also honest enough to admit that he tucked his jeans into his cowboy boots, rolling up the sleeves of his sport-coat and what not.
     Otherwise, the novel is about going to Yale, struggling with your working-class background, which is fine and realistic. I was happy with the Connecticut half of things. The part that bothered me was the kid single-handedly taking on the mob while driving his father's lunch truck on spring break, impregnating a girl he went to high school with, and winning lots of fights.
         For the record. I like Tom Perrotta for creating painful and hilarious novels with the simplest of ideas. His gift is that of culling every last bit of pathetic chaos from what we all recognize in our doomed relationships.
     His language is honest and simple, first seeming amateurish, then becoming justifiably so. He preys on your disdain for simplicity, then sculpts it into something you didn't know was there. Like Michaelangelo freeing David from the marble, Tom frees what is truly entertaining about life from the tartar-like build-up of irony on your twentieth century mind. (jesus)
     But, then again, who doesn't?
     I like his other books. This one hovers between the least entertaining aspects of  Election and the most entertaining aspects of a turd. Check it out of the library and read it with the television on.

I manage a book-store now, so reading "real" books has become a necessity to answer questions like "My wife likes books, can you recommend anything?"

BEE SEASON
by Myla Goldberg

     Pop cultural references are kept at a minimum, but the ones she uses are basic: Star Wars, Three's Company. It's as if she's never watched television in her life, which is refreshing and disappointing at the same time. I think she tacked them on for detail, recognizing the impossibility of making it through the 70s (I think that's when it takes place. It was hard to tell) without alluding to certain undeniables.
     The protagonist, a nine-year-old girl, is a magical spelling genius.  She also happens to have a remarkably articulate inner voice-- she thinks beyond her years, she thinks like a twenty seven year old.
     Her father is a religious scholar who studies Torah and stuff. Her brother is confused. Her mother is INSANE.
     The thing with the mother is my favorite part- the only character I like. The others sort of whine and complain to themselves, while the mother just goes about being insane and harboring her huge secret, the one that is going to blind-side the rest of the family. You see, THEY'VE ALL BEEN LIVING A LIE!
     If there is a book called Growing Up Jewish, I'm sure it is a lot like the first three quarters of this book. There is a lot of concern with God and religion and how you inherit it from your parents.....but it's all preparation for the big Stephen King ending which is very visual, supernatural,  shocking and...you know. (This book will become a movie. Mark my words.)
     Considering it was written by a 27 year old, it's an impressive novel. But if the point is to truly convey the turmoil of a typical suburban family, it fails.  Rather, it is an obsessive "sins of the father" fable, a novel which Goldberg probably needed to get out of her system before moving on to something more thought provoking.
     Alright, it was a Neal Simon play....'cept from a girl's point of view.  A book your aunt would read on vacation in 1983. I'll recommend it to every 37 year old mother who comes in the store.
     I finally saw a picture of Myla Goldberg and she's surprisingly cute-- still wears those striped elf-stockings from the nineties.
     

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