Dear Reader,
I don't know about you, but I am getting sick of so-called protagonists who have everything they could materially want, but are so freaking self-involved and neurotic that they either commit suicide or cause serious injury to self or others. I have had it UP TO HERE with novels/films about elite prep school life in New England, and the terrible pain of the privileged hero. And you KNOW exactly what I am talking about: Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, The Emperor's Club, The Chocolate War, The Bell Jar, Mona Lisa Smile and on and on and on. For your reading pleasure, I give you ...
THE THREE MOST PRIVILEGED, ANNOYING PAINS IN THE NECK:
1. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye.
Yes, the world was full of phonies but you had parents who loved you enough to pay for not one but THREE prep schools as you continually failed out because you were too lazy to study. You had a nervous break down and then went to a ridiculously expensive private hospital in California to recover. Which begs the question: can I have a nervous break down? I'd like to chill in beautiful, sunny CA for several months while probably being snarky and cynical to all the phony orderlies.
2. Gene Forrester, A Separate Peace. A prep school student whose rich Southern parents sent him to New England for an education. Yes, you were jealous of Finny because of his easy rapport with the other students and his physical ability. But you were a wonderful student. Instead of being grateful for your gifts, what did you do? You may or may not have pushed Finny off of a tree limb, paralyzing him, and leading to his eventual death. You spent THE ENTIRE REST OF THE NOVEL whining, torturing yourself about whether or not it was your fault. You know what? Just graduate, go to the Ivy league, and spend the rest of your mulling in high rise luxury already.
3. Neal Perry, The Dead Poets Society. Oh please. Your working class father is sending you to private school to become a doctor, and he is thus a tyrant and that makes your violent suicide somehow justified? In a word: nonsense. The reality? Neal would have graduated high school eventually (yes high school does end), and then *GASP* he could have GOTTEN A JOB and MOVED AWAY to studying acting somewhere NOT IN NEW ENGLAND. In my opinion, Neal killed himself because standing up to his father meant a working class life. It's easier to blow your brains out than get a job bagging groceries or laying brick or selling men's suits.
I think it's ridiculous that I went to a Chicago public high school and yet novels like "Catcher in the Rye" and "The Bell Jar" were required reading. Their anxieties could not have been more foreign. Polo, boarding schools, uniforms? What WERE those? One of the reasons I like Judith Guest's "Ordinary People" is because it is about a middle class family in the Midwest dealing with a very real loss.
The family's oldest son, Buck, has died. You know, the better one. The one who was light-hearted, easy to be around, and popular. When Buck dies, the ramifications for the rest of the family are fascinating to follow. Beth, the matriarch, is an especially interesting character. She certainly isn't lovable, but she has a steel backbone that's hard not to admire. She has built a reputation that her family is happy, stable, and well-adjusted. When others constantly ask: "How is your family, is there anything I can do?" the reader sees her character unravel more and more, hating the fact that she is the object of so much negative attention, of someone else's pity. I like Beth because she doesn't love easily, and feels incessant pinpricks of guilt because she probably loved her dead son more than her surviving son. The narrative itself has flaws, but it's worth plowing through to get to know the character of Beth Jarrett.
song on iTunes: Deep Inside of You by Third Eye Blind
