Customer Reviews

Goat: A Memoir

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I had been reading great reviews of this book for a few weeks before it came out and had a lot of interest in reading it.I was predisposed to like it, but I found it surprisingly lukewarm, tedious, and ultimately kind of irritating. The first section, dealing with the carjacking and assault, is very well done and moves right along, Land's minimalist, stream-of-consciousness style serving the story well. After this, though, the book essentially chronicles this young man's descent into a severe, anhedonic depression and a form of obsessive-compulsive
disorder. He elected to go to college and pledge a frat where he underwent the usual boneheaded initiation stuff, and yes any alert reader can easily draw a parallel between the initiation ordeal and his earlier assault, but I have a feeling Mr. Land would have been just as depressed and traumatized by almost anything he undertook at that point in his life. I mean, the frat stuff just ain't that bad. The author laments that he has to eat breakfast with his pledge brothers for a whole week. The frat jerks yell in his ear. They threaten to hit him with a football. He has to fetch one of the frat boys an egg roll, and then, sob, the guy doesn't even eat it! Sunlight coming in a window depresses Mr. Land. A teacher's cologne makes him "wince". The smell of the frat house makes him "scrunch his nose." His body "quivers" when his car goes over a bump. "It hurts to look at things." "The air hurts." Get the picture? This guy is monumentally depressed and as fragile as an eggshell. (And as an aside, it's not just the author. His fellow pledge brothers all seem like exquisitely delicate little hothouse flowers. After being hit with a football in the dorm hallway, two of the initiates tremble and reel around like they just survived an ambush in the Mekong Delta.)And on and on it goes, Mr. Land bruised by everyone and everything. He doesn't like the air conditioning in the dorm. He reads in the fraternity manual that hazing is prohibited and is so outraged and dumbfounded that hazing still goes on that he has to repeatedly slap himself so he can go to sleep. Let's see, everyone out there reading this who has SLAPPED themselves to sleep, raise your hand!
I have sympathy for the author, who was subjected to a vicious beating in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. I've certainly never experienced anything horrific like that. I'm simply questioning why this book needed to be written. It turns out to be weary and self-pitying, and then ends without any sort of resolution or logic. It intends to represent some kind of closure or finality that the author returns to the scene of his beating and throws away all the ephemera he's been collecting in his pockets, but no reader who has just endured over 200 pages of this young man's depression and excruciating self-awareness can truly believe that this can represent a new beginning for him.
This isn't a bad book, but I found it tedious and lacking in all the power, brutality, and savage, compelling honesty that so many have claimed to find in it. Caveat emptor.

Although I knew this would be a very hard book to read, I found myself not able to put it down. As a native of Florence & a Clemson student, the book more than intrigued me. Although I'm sure some stuff had to be exaggerated, I thought this was an amazing expose of the nature of some Greek organizations... one that most people don't want to talk about at all. I'm terribly sorry that this happened to the author, but I'm glad that he's able to put everything into words & hopefully help others.
For any of you considering coming to Clemson, please know that his experience was far from the norm. I have found that my years there have been some of the most wonderful in my life. I have found a wonderful, embracing community, & I hope that others can find that too, wherever they go!

I am deeply familiar with the concepts of isolation in this book. Small towns in the south have a particular tendency to make anyone who is a little different feel like bottom-feeders. Thinkers, feelers, and liberal personality types are completely looked down upon and ultimately pushed aside.

To these critics: I am from the exact town that Brad is from and have met him a few times. I wasn't expecting to like this book, mainly because I get annoyed with stories that ask for pity and don't really reveal anything that wasn't for purely dramatic purposes. This novel wasn't like that. He is sincere and sweet and exactly the same character he is in the novel, perhaps less hopeless and slightly more assured.

I just find it interesting that many of you criticize Land about being a little overly sensitive, or writing with too heavy of a heart, or even making decisions that you would not have made. All I have to say to that is that you obviously haven't lived in his shoes. Being from the Northeast or Northwest(where I live now), its pretty ridiculous to think you have any ability to relate to this kind of society. I've lived all over the place and will never forget the complete isolation I felt trying to just get along with people in the area, let alone in an older siblings shadow. And I am just about the most stubborn, self-assured person I know, i don't usually have self-consciousness issues.

SO.. This book was fantastic. The tone and so-called over wording was perfectly implemented. His expressions weren't careful or bold, they were sincere. The courage it takes to write this type of memoir by far surpasses anything I've read before. Cheers Brad. You represent Florence well.

I was roommates with Brad Land for a year in 2002, as he was revising an early version of Goat for his thesis in graduate school. He told me of his experiences earlier, but already he was fairly removed from them...nothing prepared me for the beauty and sparseness I found as I read Goat in book form for the first time. I love that he absolutely leaves it up to the reader to pick up any judgement or meaning of the book individually. By paring down and exposing his weaknesses and fears to us, he is showing ultimate courage. By his raw honesty and the honing of his words, he is a bigger person. He has no fear of showing us his unusual connection/love to his brother Brett, while at the same time being unafraid of making Brett human and at times pinpointing his conceited behavior. I look forward to years and years of Brad's writing. He has truly made a huge first step in Goat. I am honored to know him, both as a friend, and moreso as a writer.

Mr. Land's account is both harrowing and rife with accuracy. As a person who has been both a witness and a participant in such rituals (albeit with women, who are barely more merciful), I feel that this is an important account for two reasons. The firsthand account of depression, anxiety and hazing itself is enough by itself to keep the reader thoroughly occupied. Second is the effect that prostrating oneself to the mercy of others: Mr. Land describes the complete demoralization that takes over his life with frightening force. and his character pays a heavy toll. This is a must read for anyone interested in the sham known as the college scene.

It's not trying to expose the cruelty of hazing or the secrets of the greek system. It's about brotherhood, both figuratively and literally. It's about false fraternity and the search for true connections. It's about a shy boy who desperately needs to feel like he fits in after a certain event has made him feel completely outside of humanity altogether. To say this book is about cruel hazing rituals is beside the point. It's about cruelty in general, dealing with tragedy, and the fragility of family. I don't care if it's an accurate retelling of a true story or just a trumped up urban myth, because the heart of the story remains in tact in either case. And if you can't identify with the lonliness and desperation of Brad (or Brett for that matter) while reading this book, then you should thank your lucky stars.

There are two levels of amazement with Brad Land's memoir, Goat. In a cautionary tale about peer pressure and the violence between men, Land offers up a bird's eye view of the brutal world of the male culture, specifically within fraternities. The story details a period in Land's life immediately following his savage kidnaping and torture in the back woods of South Carolina. Beaten nearly to death for no reason at all, a teenage Land must piece together his life bit by bit by first overcoming the notoriety of his attack, the apathy of the police, the shunning of the discussion of "the incident" by his parents, and most hurtful: the distancing of his beloved brother Brett. Still, the worst is yet to come for Land. In an effort to "belong," he follows his brother to Clemson University, where he pledges at a fraternity. His brother is member, and with a desire to bridge the gap between them, he suffers an explicit, heart-pounding hazing, bringing him face to face with a violence he knows all to well. A violence that ultimately leads to death. Land's incredibly memorable debut should be required reading for parents and young men alike (particularly in light of a growing number of alcohol related deaths at fraternities). The author's distinct and powerful narrative is sensitive, captivating, urgent, and direct, and revealing of the psychology of isolated and vulnerable teen boys seeking refuge in all-male organizations pumped with testosterone, power, and rage.