Customer Reviews

Joe College

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first read about Tom Perrotta in the New York Times Book Review, when "The Wishbones" came out. Rarely have I had such an enjoyable read. As a native of New Jersey who was best man in a classic Northern Jersey, blue collar wedding, Perrotta astounded me with his ability to get his characters, dialog, and plot lines just right. When "Election" came out, I read it in one morning on a beach in Mexico, but once again, felt transported to my teenage days in New Jersey. And finally, I read Perrotta's first book, "Bad Haircut - Stories of the '70's," and found that to be a gem as well.

Which was why I found "Joe College" a disappointment. Perhaps it was a matter of reaching too far, but this novel found the author floundering a bit. While Perrotta still builds likable, yet complicated characters, in this novel he tried to build too much into it, and the result was at times, a muddled picture. I felt there were one or two subplots that could have been cut, which would have allowed the author to spend more time developing the principle characters.

Don't get me wrong - I still recommend this book. Even if it is not Perrotta's best novel, Tom Perrotta at 80% is better than most novelists at 100%. Immediately upon finishing this, I found myself calling a good friend of mine who graduated from Yale in the 80's and told him to buy this book - pronto. And I also loved Perrotta's protagonist's way of balancing not only the two worlds he lived in, that of the traditional ivy-covered walls of Yale, against his blue collar, working class hometown in New Jersey, but also the Yale of his dreams and expectations against the Yale that he actually found. And I also could completely identify with the frustration of the protagonist's love life- the hopes, the let down's, the stops, the starts.

Ultimately, I think "Joe College" will represent another level for Tom Perrotta. This novel was a bit darker, deeper and complicated than his previous ones. Perrotta is growing as a writer, and while this novel may seem like a small set- back, I still wholeheartedly recommend it. As I said, a Perrotta novel that falls slightly short of expectations is still better than most novels out there.

And I can't wait for his next one.

Based upon the reviews I had high expectations for this book. The theme is enticing: a lower middle class New Jersey guy's adjustment and transformation at a citadel of America's economic and intellectual elite. The first quarter of the book suggests that it might fulfill the potential of such a plot. However, it meanders and fizzles out, and concludes with a surrealistic ending incompatible with the rest of the novel.

In terms of the broader issues, the protagonist Danny comes across as a callow self centered, albeit good natured, guy who is willing to turn his back as well as step on friends and family rather than let them thwart his chance at escaping blue collar New Jersey after having securing access to America's highest strata at Yale. While he suffers some minor angst over his increasing detachment from his working class origins he increasingly owns, and justifies, an elitist attitude and values as well as distain for the culture of the hoi polli. This sense of meritocratic entitlement and fear of falling manifests itself in a callous, craven, and callow failure to return calls, much less confront his responsibility after impregnating a working class girl (from a social set he didn't risk mingling with in high school) who alleviated his boredom one summer home from college. While seemingly macho in confronting mob muscle attempting to frighten him off his father's lunch business route, the impetus appears more his ego, as he shows a callous disregard for the economic and physical danger this presents his family.

The book is honest, it is frank, unfortunately it is probably very realistic. The protagonist and his self discovery describe a vain man made increasingly unattractive by his quest to secure access to success. Disappointing, the hubris he meets at the end is insufficiently developed. After being delayed throughout the novel, the comeuppance warranted further development.

I can fully appreciate a dark plot and sinister characters. However, I really don't think that Perrotta intended to represent Danny as a cad. However, in reality these may accurately be the type of the characteristics and values acquired by those who secure success by upper movement through academia, where one quickly seeks to distance himself from unrefined origins once receiving access to the "top". The book also, uncomfortably perceptively, recognizes the arrogance of those advancing through academia who feel that while they are entitled to such upward movement, others are not. This novel leads the reader to view the success and values of the meritocracy with a jaundiced eye. However, I don't think that was the author's intent; I think Perrotta wanted to depict the pitfalls which might inexplicably confront a regular working class "good guy" once he earns the access to this rarified strata.

A wonderful novel which will satisfy any self-reflective needs for someone who came of age after disco but before the Go Go 80's. Danny, the first person narrator, is a working class Italian American kid from New Jersey who is here moving into his Junior year at Yale. He straddles these worlds with a freshly romantic appreciation for the peculiarities of both. His father drives a lunch truck and Danny helps out during summer and spring breaks and it is on this job that he reconnects with a high school acquaintance Cindy. Their halting relationship (she really loves him) creates the third act complication which follows Danny north to New Haven and his whole other life as a promising English Major and possible leading man for Polly, the social opposite of Cindy. It's not easy to call this book monumental because the events of the book are very personal and sort of soft, but the accretion of detail, and the rhythm and echoes between the characters and their scenes create a wonderful overall effect. Perratta is working with the huge American contradiction of what is earned and what is given and his first-person character is a bridge between a father who has made his income with his back (actually, his butt, but nevermind that) and his own future which will be built with his mind. Perratta mines Yale in the 80's for wonderful scenes of gifted children in the throes of their own amusement. And the thrown-off tone and approach of the storytelling actually conceals a deep and incisive portrait of a generation now taking charge of all of our futures.

A splendid read and highly recommended

The title of this novel would lead one to believe that it's about the life of a student in college, but that's not exactly the case. Sure, part of it takes place at college, but in truth it's more of a coming-of-age story; a young man's attempt to reconcile his working class, suburban upbringing with the wealth and intellectual glamour he discovers at prestigious Yale University. It's a well-told and compelling tale, and, like other Perrotta novels, leaves one with something to think about at its end.

We meet Danny in his junior year as he is finally coming into his own. He's established himself intellectually, he's got new and interesting friends, and he's even a bit of a celebrity in that he's an integral part of a newly-minted literary magazine. It's now been more than two years since he came to school and his home-town ties are slowly disintegrating. But some are more difficult to abandon than others.

His father, for one, owns a lunch truck, or roach coach. In a mid-life change of careers, he's decided to become his own man, to run his own business. But it is stressful work, and damaging to his health. Danny finds that he must spend all his vacation time helping him. Then there is the girl Danny met from his old high school. She's a secretary now, at a run-of-the-mill, small industrial plant. He goes out with her knowing full well that the relationship will never blossom into anything. He is aware he is using her.

Although Danny is doing well, grade-wise, he is painfully aware of all of the shenanigans going on around him, some of which he participates in. A girl has basically moved into his suite with one of his roommates. Other roommates smoke dope. Another spends his time in fascination with assassins of American presidents. Everybody drinks way, way too much. One evening, while cavorting with a female on the campus grounds, he is ridiculed by a student-actor dressed as the "fool" from Shakespeare's King Lear. Is this why our parents spend thousands and thousands of dollars a year? He thinks.

With his background, he is able to view these goings-on through the eyes of the average working-stiff American, and without ever explicitly saying why, finds that he is ashamed. His actions, sometimes reckless, sometimes foolish, seem to indicate a subconscious desire to be punished. This conflict is unresolved by novel's end.

It is unlikely that this novel will ever win a Pulitzer Prize, or even be nominated for one. There is no huge encompassing theme, there are no substantial truths revealed, there is no scathing indictment of society. None of that. It is, however, a tautly told, bright, compelling narrative with characters one would expect to meet in real life.

It is, frankly, the type of thing which present-day aspiring authors should strive for. The average reader is not interested in being dazzled by an author's research or bombarded with symbolic references to Freud, he is interested in being told a good story. If an author does this well enough and often enough, all of those other elements--the ones which make a novel great--will fall into place. Indeed, they did so in Mr. Perrotta's most recent effort, the excellent Little Children. Joe College works because, at the very least, it is a fine example of the art of storytelling.

Tom Perrotta has proven that he is a witty and observant wordsmith, crafting tales that are subversive and insightful without seeming to be either all at once. "Joe College" is a purely adolescent romp through college and dorm life, the not-quite-so-real world before you must face reality and become an adult. That is the central concept that the main character Danny must face as we follow him during his junior year at Yale.

Danny is from a working middle-class family who feels obligated to his dad for scrimping and saving so he could attend a college that may be slightly out of his league. The past summer he helped his dad out at his new job, a drive-around lunch truck called the Roach Coach, and will take over at the reigns during spring break while his dad is incapacitated. Danny cannot reconcile his life back home with his life at Yale, feeling that he only fits in with his band of misfit roommates and friends, yearning desperately after the cliche pretty girl who is dating one of their professors. As spring break approaches, Danny fervently tries to avoid his "girlfriend" from back home, an unlikely hookup that may spell certain disaster for all of his future plans.

"Joe College" is a lighthearted, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny read, but it falls flat towards the end. Readers will find themselves vacillating between liking Danny (like when he stands up to certain mafioso-type thugs who want to push his dad out of business) and just wishing he would grow up already. His dilemma is that of a man choosing to grow up or remain immature, but by the end of the novel, no decision seems to have been made in a narrative that just seems to ... stop with no resolution. Perrotta is a gifted writer, vividly bringing to life certain early eighties' sentiments and frustrations without it seeming like mere nostalgia. If only his main character were a little more well-combined, "Joe College" might be an Ivy League read.

Although I am a female and attended college a decade before Danny, this book brought back many of the memories of my college years, including all of the angst, the students' removal from the "real world" that existed off-campus, the bull sessions, and so on.

If you loved "Election" and "The Wishbones", you will like "Joe College". I felt that it lacked the immediacy of Perrotta's earlier books, and I really did not care as much about the characters. Perhaps this is because I did not think that they were as fleshed-out as the characters in his other books.

Despite this, "Joe College" was a worthwhile book to read. Danny's inner monologues are very well done, as is the contrast of his life at Yale with his parents' and Cindy's blue collar lives in New Jersey. The details of college life are very accurate and authentic, pulling the reader right into Danny's on-campus and home life.

Joe College is a novel about a guy from Jersey who is a student at Yale in the early '80's. Just from the scenario you know the potential for humor and class conflict is great--and Tom Perrotta (author of Election) doesn't disappoint.

This is a very funny story, made all the funnier for its grounding in reality. While Joe College is not strictly an autobiographical novel, it is worth noting that Perrotta was himself a student at Yale who graduated in the early '80's. IT shows in his writing. The setting is very realistically portrayed--you can almost smell the '80's, with its leather bomber jackets and Reaganite overtones. You find yourself really pulling for Danny as he struggles with Middlemarch and his overpriveleged classmates while still dealing with his world back home, including his father's lunch truck business being overrun by mafioso types, and a big-haired high-hoped girlfriend with only a high school education.

I chuckled a lot while reading this book, but also recognized myself in it. I highly recommend it.

Tom Perrotta's "Joe College" depicts dorm living, cafeteria dining, townie problems and summer job doldrums that surround college life about as honestly as any writer who dared to reveal those experiences to unwitting parents. "Joe College" lives where it happens for the 18-22 year olds today. "Joe College" is the moniker many a male student has been dubbed with during spring breaks and summer vacations working at jobs that pay for books and pocket money by those guys we all know. Perrotta's novel is a humorous and fun to read memoir of one Joe College's experiences at New Haven's Ivy League campus and behind the wheel of his dad's lunch wagon during breaks.

Behind the humor and tongue-in cheek criticism of post secondary education, "Joe College" offers a glimpse into the myriad of issues faced by college students living away from home for the first time. There are the social circles to avoid, parties to attend, high school sweethearts left behind, alcohol and drug issues, relationship and commitment issues and somewhere there are the academic reasons for attending college lurking in the shadows. Perrotta guides the main character Danny, aka Joe College, through situation after situation, sometimes humbled, other times confused.

I enjoyed this book immensely. While it conjured up certain memories better forgotten, it reminded me of a time in life when the day's issues seemed so important, people seemed so energetic and friendships were built so strong that they would last for a lifetime. Buy a copy of Perrotta's novel and then call your old roommate.

4 out 5 stars!
Joe College is a really funny book that keeps you interested the whole time. It's about Danny, a guy who runs his dad's "Roach Coach" lunch truck in the summers, and is a avid working student at Yale during the fall. The main flow of the story switches off between his current times in college, and his summer adventures. He get many love flames through out the story, and each one has some sort of problem that he has to encounter. Danny goes through some crazy stuff, but manages to stay sane somehow. This book is very realistic if you are a guy reading it, you can relate many girl problems and events Danny has with his friends that you have with yours. This story is more of a collections of events that happen through out Danny's life more than it is a novel, but its hilarious, and its so easy to relate to. Danny enjoys college life, and obsesses over the use of highlighters in his stories. He reminds himself nightly about how he has to finsish some book, but always says he can just finish it at breakfast. This book would be a great movie. I relate Perrotta to Hornby because I read "High Fidelity," and a little bit of "About a Boy," and the styles, situations and themes are the same. I love both of their writing styles, so i reccomend both. I reccommend this story more towards late teenaged guys, its more of a guy's view on life, and easier to associate.

I finished reading Joe College and let me tell you, this is another winner from Tom Perrotta.

This is the same guy who wrote Election (made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick), and The Wishbones. To be honest, it wasn't as funny as The Wishbones - a novel that just had me bursting out laughing anywhere I picked it up for a read. It wasn't as intelligent as Election - Election was just a genius piece of satire. But this was still good, fun reading.

It's a snapshot of college life and all guilt that comes with the person you are changing into during these years of your life. I'm not sure I can explain that well enough, and will just hope that some of you will know what I mean. The guilt that you feel over your parents paying, the guilt that comes with drifting away from friends that are less fortunate, the guilt of a messy room, old boyfriends. I'm sad that I've read all I can by this man.

I'm going to keep looking for that short story collection of his and just hope he's got a book coming out sooner than later.