Goat: A Memoir [Paperback]

Brad Land (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

Reeling from a terrifying assault that has left him physically injured and psychologically shattered, nineteen-year-old Brad Land must also contend with unsympathetic local police, parents who can barely discuss “the incident” (as they call it), a brother riddled with guilt but unable to slow down enough for Brad to keep up, and the feeling that he’ll never be normal again. When Brad’s brother enrolls at Clemson University and pledges a fraternity, Brad believes he’s being left behind once and for all. Desperate to belong, he follows. What happens there—in the name of “brotherhood,” and with the supposed goal of forging a scholar and a gentleman from the raw materials of boyhood—involves torturous late-night hazing, heartbreaking estrangement from his brother, and, finally, the death of a fellow pledge. Ultimately, Brad must weigh total alienation from his newfound community against accepting a form of brutality he already knows too well.

A searing memoir of masculinity, violence, and brotherhood, Goat provides an unprecedented window into the emotional landscape of young men and introduces a writer of uncommon grace and power.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Land's memoir about fraternity hazing and his relationship with his charismatic, more confident younger brother, Brett, has received a lot of publicity. However, in spite of all the hype, it is not well written and it's unlikely to resonate with most teens. Brad, 19, recovering from a vicious assault by two hitchhikers he picked up, decided to follow Brett to Clemson University. The steely, mysterious sophomore was a Kappa Sigma, and an admiring, uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin Brad decided to pledge the same frat. Teens will either identify and sympathize with Brad or become increasingly annoyed with his naïveté. Getting Vaseline smeared in one's hair and being pegged with footballs will probably (if unfortunately) not seem terribly out of the ordinary-as hazing rituals go-to most readers. To Brad, they were acts of savagery. When he bought a pack of cigarettes and the cashier told him that he was going to die, he took her for a modern-day Cassandra with an important message from the dark beyond. Brad dropped out of rush. In what would be an embarrassingly bad finale if this memoir were fiction, a man from his pledge class died of a heart attack the day after he was informed that he hadn't been accepted into the fraternity. Brad blamed the Kappa Sigs. The best part of the book is Land's description of his relationship with his brother, which is reminiscent of Rich Wallace's treatment of the best friends in Wrestling Sturbridge (Knopf, 1997). However, that title runs circles around Goat.-Emily Lloyd, Rehoboth Beach Public Library, DE
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

About to begin his second year of college, Land agrees to give a stranger a ride home from a party. The stranger brings a friend, and the two men abduct, rob, and beat Land, leaving him bleeding on a country road. His wounds heal more quickly than his psyche; the already awkward young man spends the year recovering, then transfers to a new school where his brother is already enrolled. Though he is the elder, Land has always played catch-up to his handsome, confident, and athletic sibling, and despite a warning inner voice, he pledges to the same fraternity. Hazing is barbaric. The author escapes with crippled self-esteem, but another pledge pays a far greater price. Land's clipped prose lends this memoir a feeling of immediacy, and he adds novelistic weight to simple, almost primitive dialogue. But while events are sometimes moving, he's not very successful in creating a meaningful narrative arc out of bad luck, a bad decision, and a collegiate woe that has seen its share of headlines. Strongest as a cautionary tale about fraternities. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812969685
• ISBN-13: 978-0812969689
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (79 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good, hard read., February 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Goat: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I read Goat reluctantly, not wanting to keep going through the awful moments with the author, not wanting to see any more ugliness in the world than I do already, and not wanting to feel that there would never be any easy answer to the questions I encountered here. Yet I couldn't put it down. It doesn't surprise me that other people submitting reviews reject this story--it's a truth too hard to swallow for too many Americans. The violence, and maybe more importantly, the gang mentality of this book are the elephants in the room that no one wants to talk about. It's the truth made into art, and it's a beautiful, haunting, disturbing read. For any thinking person who doesn't seek to see his or her own experience reflected back as if in a self-designed mirror, it's the kind of book that makes you look back on your own comeuppance, and note the various fears and desires that motivated your own behavior, your own life path. It's an essential contribution to the public conversation about where we are as a nation, and how we got here. It's not so much about fraternity as about humanity, and if the exposure that this book gets is centered only on the unfavorable portrait it paints of certain campus organizations, then we are all flightless birds with our heads in the sand.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than most,, January 29, 2008

By 

Just Frank (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Goat: A Memoir (Paperback)

I went to a small college so I enjoy reading about the college lives of students who went to big party schools. This book is decently written and the storyline is fairly interesting, if somewhat limited by the loner personality of the author. I think this was the author's first book so you can't be too critical with his James Freyish writing style (no quotations). It's a little annoying at first, but you get used to it.

Goat is a good first-person account of college life, but there is not as many stories about binge drinking, drugs and sex that you would expect from a kid who attended a big party school like Clemson. Again, I blame this on the author's tendency to be a loner which obviously reduces the quality of his stories when compared to a book like College Life Extreme. However, if you're not an alpha male frat boy type, (I'm not!) you might like Goat better because you can sympathize with the author who is not a jerk.

In spite of its shortcomings, I'm going to give this book four stars because it is much better than most of the other junk college life books out there and this one has feeling behind it.

22 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes less is less, March 23, 2004

By 

Edward Aycock (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Goat: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Being from an area of the country where campus frat life isn't quite as revered as it is in the South or the Midwest, Goat was a view into a different world. Goat is a subjective work, and it's obvious that frat life is not the area Brad Land should have focused so much of his attention on while in school. But then, Brad Land probably shouldn't have done a lot of things.

Some have criticized this book for the spare, faux hipster style. I didn't have a problem with that as its very apparent that Land is a true writer and I will chalk up the moments that seem a bit too flowery and overwritten to his youth. What I criticize is that we don't know enough about Land. After reading this book, my only thought was, "This kid's a nut." I wish he could have maybe put his life into some bigger perspective. Just learning that he was severely beaten and then obsessively tried to join a frat wasn't enough for me to figure out who Land is. We only know this kid from his present, no real background, no past and it makes it hard to picture him as a fully-rounded person. Doesn't he have any other thoughts in his head? Also, why he would willingly put himself through such torture as fraternity hazing after his experience being kidnapped and beaten just smacks of masochism. Of course, that seems to be the central question that never really gets answered. (...)

I think Land's talents would best be suited to other types of prose, and to that end, I look forward to seeing his talents producing good fiction in the future.