A word of praise for Tom Perrotta's "Joe College." This novel fell between the buzzy "Election" and the buzzy "Little Children," and so it was sort of overlooked. Perrotta said he wrote about Yale in part as a way of growing up. He had written about his childhood in Jersey over and over, and then "Joe College" became a bridge novel. After the Yale novel, Perrotta was able to move on to the concerns of adulthood--memorably, in "Little Children," and again in "Mrs. Fletcher," etc.
Like "Death of the Brown-Haired Girl," Perrotta's novel concerns the Yale of the recent past. Unlike "Brown-Haired Girl," Perrotta's novel explicitly names Yale as its setting.
Writers tend to be outsiders, and so they tend to write about outsiders. Danny, Perrotta's protagonist, doesn't really fit in at Yale. He comes from a working-class family--his father drives "THE ROACH COACH," a mobile coffee-purveyor, back in Jersey--and he, Danny, doesn't really know how to talk to classmates who have done gap years in Switzerland, who have emerged from African monarchies, etc.
So many things are extraordinary in Perrotta's writing. First, he has compassion for everyone, including his often-insufferable protagonist. Second, he pays close attention to *everything*--not just the lore surrounding Skull and Bones, for example, but also the particular and disgusting texture of re-heated manicotti in a college dining hall. Reading Perrotta's description of the dining-hall crew--bright-eyed undergrads, one strangely sexual high-school student, a law-school dropout with a hint of madness in his eyes--I'm immediately transported back to my own college experience. I'm not sure how Perrotta registers, and remembers, as much as he does. Additionally, Perrotta captures the ways in which we are strangers to ourselves: A character grows irritated when his girlfriend accuses him of keeping her around just for sex, and then, immediately upon reaching an orgasm (finally), the character discovers that, in fact, he *was* using this young woman just for sex. More repellant, and mysterious, and truthful: The character, later full of self-disgust, still returns to this disquieting memory again and again as a means of auto-arousal.
Perrotta understands how a small detail can evoke deeper thoughts. His protagonist, Danny, won't eat anything adventurous: just hot dogs and peanut-butter-laced graham crackers. One night, he takes the plunge in a dorm room and tries kimchi, and this becomes a kind of emotional breakthrough. He feels a weird buoyancy, a sense of pride. This is touching, and it seems to capture a small truth about real life.
Lastly, I love that Perrotta writes in an unabashed way about intellectual hunger. His protagonist cannot wait to dive back into "Middlemarch," and he has fond memories of "Paradise Lost." He reflects at length on his high-lighting habits. When people ask him how he arrived at the place he is at, he mumbles something evasive, but in truth he recalls spending many late nights with Cervantes, and he is aware that he has this sense of curiosity that he has done nothing to "work at": The curiosity is just a gift, handed to him by forces unknown. This rings true, as well, and I'm not sure I've encountered a character like this, with these specific idiosyncratic thoughts, elsewhere in contemporary fiction.
Perrotta seems like a philosopher: He seems genuinely excited by life's strange, not-entirely-knowable rhythms. He writes about "the counterintuitive": He takes your assumptions and reverses them. The NYT called "Joe College" *overwhelmingly pleasurable* -- and I think that's just right. I pick up the book and feel reminded of beauty and complexity in so many unanticipated ways. Highly recommended.
Like "Death of the Brown-Haired Girl," Perrotta's novel concerns the Yale of the recent past. Unlike "Brown-Haired Girl," Perrotta's novel explicitly names Yale as its setting.
Writers tend to be outsiders, and so they tend to write about outsiders. Danny, Perrotta's protagonist, doesn't really fit in at Yale. He comes from a working-class family--his father drives "THE ROACH COACH," a mobile coffee-purveyor, back in Jersey--and he, Danny, doesn't really know how to talk to classmates who have done gap years in Switzerland, who have emerged from African monarchies, etc.
So many things are extraordinary in Perrotta's writing. First, he has compassion for everyone, including his often-insufferable protagonist. Second, he pays close attention to *everything*--not just the lore surrounding Skull and Bones, for example, but also the particular and disgusting texture of re-heated manicotti in a college dining hall. Reading Perrotta's description of the dining-hall crew--bright-eyed undergrads, one strangely sexual high-school student, a law-school dropout with a hint of madness in his eyes--I'm immediately transported back to my own college experience. I'm not sure how Perrotta registers, and remembers, as much as he does. Additionally, Perrotta captures the ways in which we are strangers to ourselves: A character grows irritated when his girlfriend accuses him of keeping her around just for sex, and then, immediately upon reaching an orgasm (finally), the character discovers that, in fact, he *was* using this young woman just for sex. More repellant, and mysterious, and truthful: The character, later full of self-disgust, still returns to this disquieting memory again and again as a means of auto-arousal.
Perrotta understands how a small detail can evoke deeper thoughts. His protagonist, Danny, won't eat anything adventurous: just hot dogs and peanut-butter-laced graham crackers. One night, he takes the plunge in a dorm room and tries kimchi, and this becomes a kind of emotional breakthrough. He feels a weird buoyancy, a sense of pride. This is touching, and it seems to capture a small truth about real life.
Lastly, I love that Perrotta writes in an unabashed way about intellectual hunger. His protagonist cannot wait to dive back into "Middlemarch," and he has fond memories of "Paradise Lost." He reflects at length on his high-lighting habits. When people ask him how he arrived at the place he is at, he mumbles something evasive, but in truth he recalls spending many late nights with Cervantes, and he is aware that he has this sense of curiosity that he has done nothing to "work at": The curiosity is just a gift, handed to him by forces unknown. This rings true, as well, and I'm not sure I've encountered a character like this, with these specific idiosyncratic thoughts, elsewhere in contemporary fiction.
Perrotta seems like a philosopher: He seems genuinely excited by life's strange, not-entirely-knowable rhythms. He writes about "the counterintuitive": He takes your assumptions and reverses them. The NYT called "Joe College" *overwhelmingly pleasurable* -- and I think that's just right. I pick up the book and feel reminded of beauty and complexity in so many unanticipated ways. Highly recommended.
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