- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition edition (Oct 5 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 031228327X
- ISBN-13: 978-0312283278
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13.7 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #656,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
From Amazon
Having penned Election, a great novel of high-school manners, Tom Perrotta gives us Joe College, a great novel about college mores. In 1982, one Yale junior struggles with George Eliot, dorm blanket bingo, dining-hall dish-line duty, a massive crush on a girl in love with his favorite prof, daily cards and calls from a girl back home in New Jersey, and a lush profusion of authentically individual yet instantly recognizable undergrad eccentrics. After an evening of ritualistic bong hits, kimchee feasting, and sympathetic discussion of Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who shot President McKinley, Danny thinks of his parents: "Was this what they scrimped and sacrificed for all those years? So their son could spend his Tuesday nights drinking beer, smoking dope, eating weird food, and learning to see the assassin's side of the story?"
Yup, that's the way it was, and Perrotta's immense strength is to give moment-by-moment immediacy to his hero's tortuous internal monologue. Instead of dumping his Jersey girl, Danny figures, "if I avoided her long enough, she'd get tired of waiting and supply my half of the conversation on her own, thereby sparing me the unpleasantness of having to be the bad guy." Yet he is also capable of heroism, as when he impulsively defies no-neck Mafiosi who menace his dad's "Roach Coach" lunch truck, which Danny drives to blue-collar work sites during school breaks. What gives the story structure is the collision in our hero's soul between his former life and the world of towers, moats, and upward mobility. He can't quite identify with his hometown reverence for Bruce Springsteen, but it rubs him wrong to see Springsteen LPs played "for the enjoyment of people who were going to end up being the bosses of the people the Boss was singing about. Nobody in Entryway C was born to run."
Election may have a better plot, but Joe College scoots along like a waterskeeter on a marvelous stream of consciousness. Tom Perrotta was born to write. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
HYale junior Danny is the winning narrator of Perrotta's fourth bookD"winning" not just because he's smart and funny, but also because when it comes to college life, love and misbehavior, the guy always comes out on top. Conflicts in his life are neatly resolved through acts of grace or circumstance. Driving drunk on his spring break, Danny gets pulled over for a busted headlightDby a policeman who turns out to be an old high school friend. At school, the girl he likes calls him out of the blue to say she wants to sleep with him. And back home in New Jersey, his girlfriend, Cindy, pregnant with his child, makes a life-changing decision that leaves Danny free of guilt and responsibility. The resulting portrait is of a picaresque hero who's not just charming but charmed, a befuddled na f easily embracing everything life throws his way. Set in 1982, the novel is studded with references to that era's pop cultureDKansas songs on the radio; Jodie Foster sightings on campus. But the book's appeal is in its idiosyncrasies, not its name-dropping. Danny spends his spring break behind the wheel of the Roach Coach, his father's lunch truck, and must fend off the hostile Lunch Monsters, a gang of New Jersey thugs who want to steal his father's route. Story lines like that one prove that Perrotta (Election; The Wishbones) is in full control of his quirky comic sensibility, and they make it easy to root for Danny as he navigates his way from his blue-collar past to his privileged future. The novel leaves some loose ends hanging, but after things fall so neatly into place for its narrator, that comes as a reliefDa reminder that art, like life, isn't perfect after all. (Sept.) FYI: Perrotta's Election was made into a film starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
All through that winter and into the spring, when our Tuesday- and Thursday-night dinner shifts were done, Matt and I would sit at the long table near the salad bar and plan his end-of-the-year party, our voices echoing importantly in the cavernous wood-panelled dining hall. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
All through that winter and into the spring, when our Tuesday- and Thursday-night dinner shifts were done, Matt and I would sit at the long table near the salad bar and plan his end-of-the-year party, our voices echoing importantly in the cavernous wood-panelled dining hall. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
a major disappointment,
By
This review is from: Joe College: A Novel (Paperback)
I read this after reading Perotta's wonderful "Little Children." His humor, his insights, his sharp observations, his affection for his characters - all are there. What is not there is a sense of structure, a center of gravity, a consistent viewpoint or any movement toward character development. These flaws point up how much the author learned in the three years between novels, but his sensibility in this book lies uncomfortably close to grad school moral righteousness and self-congratulation. The main character is rarely very funny and his friends are interchangeable. In some instances, the minor characters are more strongly drawn than the major ones. But keep watching this guy - he may just take the right risks someday.
4.0 out of 5 stars
hilarious trip down memory lane,
By A Customer
This review is from: Joe College: A Novel (Paperback)
Very funny look back at college life in the early 80's. I went to college a decade later but can still see a lot of myself in the protagonist and his friends. Danny, the main character,comes from a working-class background, which causes him to view Yale with a somewhat different perspective than his well-to-do dormmates. Although he enthusiastically samples this foreign world, he finds he is not able to leave his old life behind so easily. During a vacation, he becomes involved with an old high school classmate, and, largely due to his own passivity, lets the relationship continue after he goes back to school.The second half of the book takes place during a school break and examines the truth to the statement "you can't go home again" as Danny takes over his father's lunch truck route while he is recuperating from an operation. I won't describe all the messes this young man becomes entangled with, but suffice to say how he finally resolves them is hilarious. The only thing I disliked about the book was the often almost-maddening passivity of Danny. He seemed to have a knack for getting out of tough spots due to luck, not his own effort. As a result, he did not seem to grow much by the end. However, for a spot-on look at college during the Reagan years, read "Joe College."
5.0 out of 5 stars
even funnier than Little Children,
By "carolyn_weiner" (Maryland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Joe College: A Novel (Paperback)
Perrotta's a bigshot bestselling author now that he has Little Children (which I loved), but make sure you go back and check out his dead-on look at life for a blue-collar boy who hits it big at Yale (but can't shake his N.J. girlfriend). Funny and charming.
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