Disaffected High School Students' Top 10 Books
Submitted by wheat on Tue, 02/20/2001 - 09:58
Tags:
- Sometimes A Great Notion (Ken Kesey)
- Anything by Denis Johnson
- Outerbridge Reach (Robert Stone)
- The Ice Storm (Rick Moody, yes the movie was based on this book)
- Eden Express (Mark Vonnegut, son of)
- Anywhere But Here (Mona Simpson)
- Infinite Jest (D F Wallace)
- The Fan Man (William Kotswinkle)
- Independence Day (by Richard Ford, not the ufo movie)
- Make Me Work (short stories by Ralph Lombreglia)
Author Comments:
In no particular order. I read the older ones in high school, the newer ones I would have read if I was in high school now. They're still enjoyable by older folks.
Even though this book isn't in the full odor of sancticity right now, I used to use "The Basketball Diaries" by Jim Carroll as a great book-for-boys-who-don't-like-to-read: it's the real-life story of a kid in Hell's Kitchen who lived at the same time that the musical/movie "West Side Story" came out. Carroll is not only an honest, but a good writer as he details how he goes from adolescent troublemaker to full-bore junkie (a late passage refers to how he can't pose as an ingenuous kid anymore, since he looks too obviously drug-ravaged...at sixteen). In between, he has funny/horrific/wonderful experiences in and around a New York in times both more savage and more innocent than our own.
Another book for non-readers is "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson: the vocabulary is simple and colorful, the situations over-the-top funny, and even kids (and older folks, too) who would never, ever, do what Thompson did will laugh.
And then, there's the granddaddy of all of these: Naked Lunch. Carefully chosen, anecdotes from Burroughs make great reading-aloud material for rebellious 12 year olds; older kids usually get off on the weird imagery and dated 40's hipster slang.
I might as well face it: all three of these books are about drugs, and I'm sure that somewhere along the line, someone's going to talk about how they "glamorize" drug use. Unfortunately, there isn't a book written about the subject that doesn't get a patina of glamor over time: forbidden fruit is always glamorous, even if it smells like a durian. (You don't want to know...) On the other hand, for guerrilla outreach material, they're invaluable, because they all show that the same kinds of troubles people have now aren't new. Good books, all, and warmly recommended for your favorite little troublemaker. They might even start writing themselves....
Oh, and did I mention Rimbaud, Patti Smith, Jim Morrison?....Yesssss.
what else did william kotswinkle write? i know that i've read something of his....a long time ago..i think it was sci-fi/fantasy and pretty well-known...i wanna say ET but that's not right. help me out if you know what i'm talking about... his best known book...thanks
Are you sure it's not ET? Kotzwinkle did do the novelization.
Let me put you guys out of your misery(s): it's DOCTOR RAT, published in 1976. I got this info. from memory and confirmed it via my copy of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
I just read Kotzwinkle's The Midnight Examiner, and I loved it. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a work of fiction (non-fiction would probably be a Dave Barry column). I'm interesting in checking out The Fan Man - do you recommend any of his other stuff as well?