I’d rather not start with any backstory.
I’m too busy for that right now: planning the escape, stealing my older brother’s fake ID (he’s lying about his height, by the way), and strategizing high-protein snacks for an overnight voyage to the single most dangerous city on earth.
So no backstory, not yet.
Just....fill in the pieces. For instance, if I neglect to tell you that I’m four foot eight, feel free to picture me a few inches taller. If I also neglect to tell you that all the other boys in my grade are five foot four, and that James Madison (his actual name) is five foot *nine* and doesn’t even have to mow the lawn for his allowance, you might as well just pretend I’m five foot nine too. Five foot nine with broad, slam-dunking hands and a girlfriend (in high school!) and a clear, unblemished face. Pretend I look like that, like James Madison.
I do, except exactly opposite plus a little worse.
By the way, despite our tremendous height gap, he and I weigh the same. The school nurse told me that once: “James Madison was just in, before you,” she said, grinning like her news was a Christmas puppy, “and you weigh the exact same!” This is the one attribute at which I’m *not* below average: body heft....
-Gay snark starts early. You can be a closeted fifth grader and still have a well-developed bitchy sense of humor. This particular narrator will go on to observe that James Madison is “licking the Ritalin crumbs from his lips.” James will lunge at the narrator, Nate--just to be nasty--and Nate will scream “a little.” But, like any smart gay kid, Nate will “turn the shriek into a melody.” That’s what creative types do. This novel is Tim Federle turning his own shriek into a melody: making art out of something painful. The excessive weight, the absence of a girlfriend, the unimpressive stature, the blemished face, the inability to make a slam dunk: lemons, converted to lemonade.
-It’s a bit exasperating that someone could make a career change and pick up a pen and have such an obvious triumph, right away. The title of the novel--“Better Nate than Ever”--announces that the writer knows what he is doing. And the first sentence seems--to me--worthy of being canonical. “I’d rather not start with any backstory.” This tells us quite a bit. The narrator is bright; he has an awareness of story structure. He’s breathless; he has many schemes happening; this need to be in the midst of an elaborate plot is part of the force that is going to propel him toward a Broadway career (by the end of the book). He also doesn’t really know himself: He is telling us that he won’t give us backstory, but of course the next thing he does is give us a great deal of backstory. You can’t help but fall in love with this kid.
-I’m in awe of how much Tim Federle notices. The weird aggression of the nurse, hidden behind feigned chipper-ness. (As so much teacherly nastiness does tend to be hidden behind a big smile.) “You weigh the same as James Madison!” Why would anyone say that--unless she were deeply unhappy with herself, and needed some way to inflict pain on the powerless? That’s there, right on the second page. (And a killer simile: “Grinning like her news was a Christmas puppy.”) Gratuitous cruelty, an awareness of politics and power: “He lunged at me to make me scream a little....I screamed a little.” An interest in playacting, the ways that people preen before presenting themselves to the world: “I took my brother’s fake ID (he lied about his height)....” A brisk rejection of cliches: New York City is not “the greatest city in the world,” but “the most dangerous city in the world.” You can’t fake good writing. The novel seems to have a beating heart at its center; it wants to present a character previously absent from the world of children’s fiction; it begins with great authority, and then it never loses steam.
And that’s all for the summer. I’m away for the next week! Blog posts will resume in early September. Until then!
I’m too busy for that right now: planning the escape, stealing my older brother’s fake ID (he’s lying about his height, by the way), and strategizing high-protein snacks for an overnight voyage to the single most dangerous city on earth.
So no backstory, not yet.
Just....fill in the pieces. For instance, if I neglect to tell you that I’m four foot eight, feel free to picture me a few inches taller. If I also neglect to tell you that all the other boys in my grade are five foot four, and that James Madison (his actual name) is five foot *nine* and doesn’t even have to mow the lawn for his allowance, you might as well just pretend I’m five foot nine too. Five foot nine with broad, slam-dunking hands and a girlfriend (in high school!) and a clear, unblemished face. Pretend I look like that, like James Madison.
I do, except exactly opposite plus a little worse.
By the way, despite our tremendous height gap, he and I weigh the same. The school nurse told me that once: “James Madison was just in, before you,” she said, grinning like her news was a Christmas puppy, “and you weigh the exact same!” This is the one attribute at which I’m *not* below average: body heft....
-Gay snark starts early. You can be a closeted fifth grader and still have a well-developed bitchy sense of humor. This particular narrator will go on to observe that James Madison is “licking the Ritalin crumbs from his lips.” James will lunge at the narrator, Nate--just to be nasty--and Nate will scream “a little.” But, like any smart gay kid, Nate will “turn the shriek into a melody.” That’s what creative types do. This novel is Tim Federle turning his own shriek into a melody: making art out of something painful. The excessive weight, the absence of a girlfriend, the unimpressive stature, the blemished face, the inability to make a slam dunk: lemons, converted to lemonade.
-It’s a bit exasperating that someone could make a career change and pick up a pen and have such an obvious triumph, right away. The title of the novel--“Better Nate than Ever”--announces that the writer knows what he is doing. And the first sentence seems--to me--worthy of being canonical. “I’d rather not start with any backstory.” This tells us quite a bit. The narrator is bright; he has an awareness of story structure. He’s breathless; he has many schemes happening; this need to be in the midst of an elaborate plot is part of the force that is going to propel him toward a Broadway career (by the end of the book). He also doesn’t really know himself: He is telling us that he won’t give us backstory, but of course the next thing he does is give us a great deal of backstory. You can’t help but fall in love with this kid.
-I’m in awe of how much Tim Federle notices. The weird aggression of the nurse, hidden behind feigned chipper-ness. (As so much teacherly nastiness does tend to be hidden behind a big smile.) “You weigh the same as James Madison!” Why would anyone say that--unless she were deeply unhappy with herself, and needed some way to inflict pain on the powerless? That’s there, right on the second page. (And a killer simile: “Grinning like her news was a Christmas puppy.”) Gratuitous cruelty, an awareness of politics and power: “He lunged at me to make me scream a little....I screamed a little.” An interest in playacting, the ways that people preen before presenting themselves to the world: “I took my brother’s fake ID (he lied about his height)....” A brisk rejection of cliches: New York City is not “the greatest city in the world,” but “the most dangerous city in the world.” You can’t fake good writing. The novel seems to have a beating heart at its center; it wants to present a character previously absent from the world of children’s fiction; it begins with great authority, and then it never loses steam.
And that’s all for the summer. I’m away for the next week! Blog posts will resume in early September. Until then!
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