Customer Reviews

Growing Up on Route 66

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If given the choice, I suspect that most people wouldn't really want to go back and relive those tumultuous, confusing years of adolescence. But wouldn't it be great if you could do it, knowing what you now know as an adult? You'd probably worry a little more about a few things, a lot less about most things, and you'd certainly have a lot more fun! That's what writer Michael Lund has done through his first novel, "Growing Up on Route 66." We get to experience all the intimate thoughts, embarrassing situations, comedic escapades, and triumphs of teenager Mark Landon and his friends, through the eyes of the adult Mark. Some things have changed since the 50s, and perhaps today's teenagers, sadly enough, aren't quite as naive as Mark. But his struggles and questions are still universal, and you'll have a great time reliving your own adolescence as you read about Mark's experiences. I wish I had known what those guys were thinking when I was Mark's age, and as the mother of two teenaged boys, I think I understand them a lot better after reading this book!

While William Frank (Farmville Herald 12-22-00) speaks of the undeniable "moral content" in Lund's "novel of initiation," this reader, on the other hand, would argue that the novel fits more comfortably in the genre of the Antibildungsroman, a niche in the literary cavalcade heretofore filled by a few notable works, most prominent of which would be The Tin Drum of Gunter Grass. Here, Mark Landon, the midwestern Everyyouth, is enveloped by a repressive sexual environment which conspires against his sensual enlightenment in such an overpowering manner that his growth (or non-growth, as with Grass' Oskar) is best described as a hopeless status of sexual cluelessness until it flowers in--or, better yet, bumbles into--the unexpected climax described on pp. 256-58.

Lund's humorous conclusion, hinted at as early as the introduction, lends credence to the assumption that Landon will not change in any palpable way, but, unlike Oskar, whose stunted overall growth was at least partially compensated by a sexual development nonpareil, will remain largely unenlightened until the dawning of his middle age, when a belated epiphany of what had been going on around him his whole life finally sinks home at a time at which, ironically, he's too old to do much about it. The novel, however, does hint at the relevance of several as yet unexplored fields in Landon's life, such as his war experience and his subsequent embrace of the mysteries of Anglicanism.

Perhaps, an implied sequel will reveal whether this Everyyouth does at some belated point develop into an Everyman, and might also provide answers to such burning questions as whether Marcia Terrell, the novel's Everygirl and a refreshingly original character, overcomes the burdens of the same repressive environment by taking Route 66 to some pre-Title-IX form of the WNBA, or some other road equally appropriate for a liberated daughter of the American Midwest. We will wait and see.