a book club of one: king dork

On the recommendation of a friend, I have just finished King Dork, a novel with a painfully dorky teen protagonist who hates The Catcher in the Rye and the people who idolize it, most likely because he doesn't recognize how Caufield-eque he really is. I guess the novel is Young Adult, but as a high school literature teacher I've read enough YA lit. to know quality from crap and this is quality. As a person who a) teaches painfully dorky boys, b) witnesses the horrors of high school on a daily basis behind the safety of a teacher's desk, c) enjoys a good mystery/comedy/coming-of-age story as much as the next gal, and d) adored The Catcher in the Rye so much that she considered naming her first born son "Holden," it probably goes without saying that I really enjoyed the novel and would highly recommend it to others (unless you take issue with "colorful language" and scenes depicting awkward, teenage intimacy - i.e. - Mom, you might want to pass on this one). Oh, and did I mention it was written by Frank Portman of The Mr. T Experience? 'Cause it was.

JMW over at A Special Way of Being Afraid does this thing called "Archive of the Week" where he posts excerpts from books he likes, and I thought I'd steal that idea for this post. Here's my favorite insightful/angst-ridden/poignant passage from the book. Enjoy.

The title of The Catcher in the Rye comes from a misquoted poem by Robert Burns, which Holden Caufield elaborates into a mystical fantasy about saving children from falling off a cliff. There are all these kids playing in a field of rye, and he stands guard ready to catch them if they stray from the field. A lot of people have found this to be a very moving metaphor for the experience of growing up, or anxiety about the loss of innocence, or the Mysterious Dance of Life. Or any random thing, really…. The brilliance of it, though is that the people in the Catcher Cult manage to see themselves as everybody in the scenario all at once. They're the cute, virtuous kids playing in the rye, and they'’re also the troubled misfit adolescent who dreams of preserving the kids' innocence by force and who turns out to have been right all along. And they'’re also the grown-up moralistic busybody with the kid-sized butterfly net who is charged with keeping all the kids on the premises, no matter what. Somehow, they don'’t realize you can'’t root for them all.

Say you'’re a kid in this field of rye. You try to find a quiet place where you can be by yourself, to invent a code based on "“The Star-Spangled Banner," or to design the first four album covers of your next band, or to write a song about a sad girl, or to read a book once owned by your deceased father. Or just to stare off into space and be alone with your thoughts. But pretty soon someone comes along and starts throwing gum in your hair, and gluing gay porn to your helmet, and urinating on your funny little hat from the St. Vincent de Paul and hiring a psychiatrist to squeeze the individuality out of you, and making you box till first blood, and pouring Coke on your book, and beating you senseless in the boys'’ bathroom, and ridiculing your balls, and holding you upside down till you fall out of your pants, and publicly charting your sexual unattractiveness, and confiscating your Stratego, and forcing you to read and copy out pages from the same three books over and over and over. So you think, who needs it? You get up and start walking. And just when you think you'’ve found the edge of the field and are about to emerge from Rye Hell, this AP teacher or baby-boomer parent dressed as a beloved literary character scoops you up and throws you back into the pit of vipers. I mean, the field of rye.

Sound good? I'’m sorry, but I'’m rooting for the kids and hoping they get out while they can. And as for you, Holden old son: if you happen to meet my body coming through the rye, I'd really appreciate it if you'’d just stand aside and get out of my fucking way.