Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor [Hardcover]

Josh Wolk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2007

What happens when a grown man returns to the site of his fondest childhood memories? A wry, clear-eyed, and laugh-out-loud look at the transition to adulthood

Three months before getting married at age thirty-four, Josh Wolk decides to treat himself to a "farewell to childhood" extravaganza: one last summer working at the beloved Maine boys’ camp where he spent most of the eighties. And there he finds out that there’s no better way to see how much you’ve changed than to revisit a place that hasn’t changed at all.

In these eight hilarious, uncomfortable, enlightening weeks, Josh readjusts to life teaching swimming and balancing on a thin metal cot in a cabin of shouting, wrestling, wet-willie-dispensing fourteen-year-olds who, contrary to the warnings of doomsaying sociologists, he finds indistinguishable from the rowdy fourteen-year-olds of his day in any way other than their haircuts. With his old camp friends gone, he finds himself working alongside guys who used to be his campers. Moments of feeling cripplingly old are offset by the corrosive insecurities of his youth when he’s paired in the cabin with Mitch, the forty-two-year-old jack-of-all- extreme-sports whose machismo intimidated Josh so much fifteen years earlier, and whom their current campers idolize. And throughout all this disorienting regression, Josh’s telephone conversations with his fiancée, Christine, grow increasingly intense as their often comical discussions over the wedding become a flimsy cover for her worries that he’s not ready to relinquish his death-grip on the comforts of the past.

A hilarious and insightful look at the tenacious power of nostalgia, the glory of childhood, and the nervous excitement of taking a leap to the next unknown stage in life, Cabin Pressure will appeal to anyone who’s ever been young, wishes he was young again, but knows deep down it probably isn’t a good idea.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Wolk bids adieu to carefree living by returning one last time to summer camp before he gets married. In his account of his eight-week stint as a counselor at Camp Eastwind in Maine, he takes the reader on a romp through male adolescence, which, for Wolk, has retained an archetypal purity. Through the humor ("apoopeatersayswhat?"), the diving board games ("arrrgh, ya got me!"), the smell ("a mixture of feet, old olive loaf and an un–air-conditioned morgue"), he captures the essence of the male teenager with tender, wistful insight. The book evokes in the reader the same nostalgia for camp—and even adolescence—that Wolk feels as he anticipates his return to Eastwind. What propels the memoir, though, is Wolk's frank description of his own re-emerging insecurities inherent to his adolescent self. When he receives a tepid reception from the other counselors, for instance, he calls his fiancée and expresses his reservations about his plan, sounding like a homesick camper calling home. Then there is Mitch, the "action-sport junky" counselor from Wolk's youth, creating the perfect balance between tension and fun-loving innocence: Wolk's domination over his campers in backgammon just cannot compare to Mitch's speedboat rides. But Wolk undergoes a significant transformation, leaving behind his adolescent misconceptions about manhood and re-entering the world on his own terms. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

A few months before his impending wedding, before the full weight of adulthood descended upon him, Entertainment Weekly senior writer Wolk realized he needed to take some time and get reacquainted with his younger self. He returned to the summer camp where he spent some of the best weeks of his life, both as a camper and as a counselor. A lighthearted take on the whole you-can't-go-home-again theme, his memoir is like the best bits of a whole bunch of summer-camp movies (remember Meatballs? or Indian Summer?) mixed together. Not that it's just a rehash of stuff you have seen before: Wolk puts a new spin on his perennial topic, observing camp life from the point of view of someone who knows what it was like 20 years ago and who is in the position to compare the boy he used to be with the man he is today. Sometimes poignant, but mostly just very funny, Wolk's reflections will get readers thinking about maybe, just maybe, taking one last plunge into childhood before it's too late. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (May 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401302602
• ISBN-13: 978-1401302603
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,085,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sure, I wrote the comic memoir, "Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth at Summer Camp." But, you may ask, what else have I done? You sure are nosy, but I'll indulge you.

After growing up in historic Lexington, Massachusetts (you know that liberty you enjoy in America? YOU'RE WELCOME!), I attended Tufts University. There I founded the campus humor magazine, The Zamboni, a title I thought was very clever at age 19. Upon graduation, I moved to New York and worked on a series of television shows that I could not in good conscience ever recommend my friends watch. Perhaps you remember my production-coordinator work on Lifetime Medical Television's "Cardiology Update"? People are still talking about the season-three cliffhanger.

Realizing TV was not for me, I attended Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism (go Fightin' Sources!), and then spent a year fact-checking at Vanity Fair. The writers I worked with there taught me a very important rule of journalism: if you know a fact-checker will later need to review your interview tapes, do not leave your recorder running in your pocket while you go to the bathroom. From VF I headed to Entertainment Weekly as the first original writer for its online site, EW.com. I later moved to the magazine, where I am now a senior writer, and now can sense when a major movie is bombing just by the way the wind changes.

My work has also appeared in the New York Times, Time Out New York, Sports Illustrated, and Golf magazine, and my commentaries have been heard on NPR's "All Things Considered."

I live in Brooklyn with my wife, Christine, and daughter. I am six-foot-seven-inches tall, but trust me, you do not want me on your basketball team.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So funny, June 5, 2007

By 

Elizabeth "Almost a Mom" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor (Hardcover)

I bought this book for my Dad for Father's Day and when it arrived just wanted to read the first page or so...and couldn't stop. It is really well written and although it's a cliche I really did laugh out loud while reading it. The perfect gift for any guy...which is why I am buying my Dad a new copy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Entertaining, Perfect Summer Read, June 25, 2007

By 

J. R. Reynolds (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor (Hardcover)

This was a very enjoyable book, easy to read (in a good way) and laugh out loud funny in a lot of spots. Josh Wolk has a great way with words and some of his quips are quite clever and extremely amusing. I have never been to summer camp, but that didn't stop me from appreciating this entertaining book. By the time the campers were being picked up by their parents at the end of the book, I actually realized I was going to miss some of these characters (even ADD Kid). Highly recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Threshold apprehension., October 18, 2007

By 

Jose Jones - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor (Hardcover)

I take that title from a Frank Black song, which I think is a pretty accurate way of describing the nervous step you take into full-fledged adulthood. "Cabin Pressure" details Josh Wolk's step.

I first took notice of Wolk through his terrific writing at "Entertainment Weekly." He wrote day-after commentary on the "Real World" that was so gut-bustingly hilarious my friends and I used to E-mail the highlights to each other. After a while, the writing was so good and the show so bad, we stopped watching the show and just read the wrap-ups.

Wolk's best skill as a writer is his gift of observation. Give him any scenario and he can instantly break it down, expose each player's motivation, and end it all with a hilarious analogy.

He brings that keen observation to "Cabin Pressure," his tale of heading back to camp as a counselor on the brink of his wedding day. Having remembered camp as a kind of innocent oasis, Josh wants to reexperience it one more time before he becomes, gulp, a husband and a father.

Wolk fills us in on summer-camp life -- what he remembered from his day, what has changed, and what hasn't. The best part of the book is Wolk's interaction with the kids in his cabin. He does an amazing job of letting you know each one, whether they are charming, maddening, or depressingly and prematurely stressed-out and miserable.

I don't necessarily think I bought into Josh's overall theme here -- this whole nostalgic innocence trip -- but it doesn't matter because "Cabin Pressure" is often hilarious and reading this book is like a well-spoken, really funny friend telling you his best summer-camp stories.

The tone can shift from body-odor humor to some strong emotional connections with the boys, and all the while Wolk's razor-sharp observation and pitch-perfect punchlines remain.

After reading Wolk in "Entertainment Weekly" all those years, and laughing my butt off, this book lives up to all of my expectations. Funny and insightful, "Cabin Pressure" is a wonderful debut book.