Joe College: A Novel
by Tom Perrotta
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom PerrottaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-19
ISBN: 0312361785
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Book Reviews of Joe College: A Novel
Book Review: "A flattering consensus seemed to have developed that my life was shaping up pretty well."
Summary: 4 Stars
Although it deals with entirely different characters and settings, "Joe College" can be seen as a sequel of sorts to "Election"; Perrotta moves logically from the angst of high school to the angst of college. This later book is, I think, a far better one, largely because the author has abandoned the multiple sound-alike adolescent voices he fashioned for "Election" and has instead concentrated his skills to create Danny, a wholly believable, self-absorbed college junior straddling the working class world of his father and the somewhat privileged fantasy life of a Yale student.
Danny thinks of himself as well-meaning and good-natured--and, to some extent, he is: "I couldn't stand the idea of people I'd grown up with thinking badly about me, especially since a flattering consensus seemed to have developed that my life was shaping up pretty well." But his immaturity and his concern with appearances have unintended consequences. He's more than willing to help with the family lunch-truck business, but he allows a misplaced sense of machismo to overcome his father's warnings about the mobster heavies trying to make inroads in the region. He pals it up with the townies working with him in the campus cafeteria, but among his fellow Yalies he's embarrassed by the girl he dated briefly back in his own hometown ("one glance and you would have known that she didn't belong"). He's quite happy providing a shoulder to cry on to a student having a tumultuous and ill-advised affair with a professor, but he's using those sympathies to finagle his own way into her heart. Trying to be all things to all people, while simultaneously doing what's best for himself, he nearly alienates everyone.
Depending on one's age, "Joe College" will feel like historical pop fiction or an excruciating nostalgia trip (yes, "Rock the Casbah" and REO Speedwagon are as close in time to Perry Como and the Korean War as they are to today), and Perrotta clearly has fun fondly mocking the period's excesses and corniness, not to mention the surreal isolation of campus life. In spite of the many momentous or menacing situations Danny gets himself into, the novel never loses its humor or breeziness; Perrotta's comic novels employ a far lighter satirical touch than do the suburban chronicles of Cheever and Updike (and, in spite of the comparisons by a few lazy critics, there is nothing of Holden Caulfield in Danny). Overall, "Joe College" is a fun, pleasant, and even memorable portrait of a mostly likable young man.
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