I read, too!

Like many other college students on summer vacation, I have a somewhat ambitious reading list [quantity over quality for me basically]. Unlike probably many other students, I have barely been able to cross many names off that hefty list. I've mostly been swimming in Salinger [post on that later], but last night I decided to up the ante. I completed the novel American Youth by Phil LaMarche.

The reason for my speedy read? Dude teaches at SU! SU = Syracuse University, my college and life partner [or so it feels like]. I got the latest Syracuse University Magazine [post about that next, I suspect] and they had this feature about writers from SU, and I saw an excerpt from this novel! It all clicked.

I'm clearly pretty wrapped up in my own studies over at Newhouse, because I didn't really even stop to think about how the English department is swarming with all these accomplished/published authors.

-George Saunders

-Arthur Flowers

-Phil LaMarche

NEW GOAL FOR THE SUMMER: Read these people and then try to get a class with them. It's a lofty goal for basically one semester, but I gotta try. Also, I know that there are plenty more, and please enlighten me!

Onto the novel: I think I get extra points because I bought it in Syracuse. I was browsing the shelves of the store that I never buy books in, determined to buy something substantial. And let's be serious- I'm immediately drawn in with a title like "American Youth." It's so full, encompassing. I read the back of the book a million times and that did it for me - tragedy, woods, New England. Done, done and done.

I think there's something to be said for me having read the entire thing in just a few hours. I am a very slow and distracted reader, so that's an accomplishment. Also, I never thought that I would sympathize with a gun-owner, but that's what the novel did to me at first. It deals a lot with politics, with the backdrop of 9th grade priorities. I couldn't really relate to the story but I certainly related to the age of the characters - I was squirming for a lot of the read, talking out loud. The covers compare LaMarche to Cormac McCarthy, and I think that's warranted. He went through the whole novel describing the main character as "the boy," something we may have seen before in material by McCarthy. All in all, I really hate to say something like this but it's really sort of a manly novel- there are guns and a step-by-step slaughtering of a deer. This also reminded me a lot of the film "This is England"- similar politics, shaved heads and situations. I had a lot of trouble picturing the main character, so I kept defaulting to the tiny chubby boy in TIE.

Conclusion: Go Orange?

[Image is the Australian cover of the novel. I couldn't find a clear picture of the cover that I bought so I picked the one I liked the most. Image is from http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/display_title.asp?ISBN=9780330422970&Author=LaMarche,%20Phil]