The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

22:25Jeff:And like contextually, 1991 and 1999 matter because this book lands right in the middle of purity culture. And the characters are experiencing that. And there are culture wars over sex education. Just a few years before this book comes out, President Clinton's Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was forced to resign because she suggested that masturbation should be taught in sex ed curricula as a form of safer sex and as AIDS prevention. and so like all of that is around these kids in terms of like what their teachers are allowed to say to them what their parents feel like they should know or don't know like i guess then it's a little more believable that charlie doesn't know what masturbation is at the start of this book no one's talking about it has been out for 30 years i mean i don't know i'm not sure i mean but also like he has an older brother and he goes to public schools like i mean i remember the boys making the jack off motion like from the early like in my earliest consciousness that's been a joke that teenage boys do but they're in this real culture but like we're not talking yet about all these things with teenagers they're experiencing them but the adults are not having conversations with them about it and chaboski kind of slides right in and is like like you can picture the youth pastor flipping his chair around and leaning forward to me like kids around his baseball cap.

23:47Jeff:Yeah. A weird career for Stephen Chbosky. I mean, this is the, I think the singular accomplishment of his life. He's gone on to do movies now. And I think the comps to John Hughes and Cameron Crowe are interesting to make. I mean, he has the book among them, right? John Hughes has the hits. And then Cameron Crowe is like a little bit later and he has the sort of the music bona fides that the others doesn't. So Chbosky grows up in Pittsburgh. He's born in 1970s, so he's eight years older than I am. He's a huge reader. And he got involved early with this guy named Stuart Stern, who was a screenwriter, who also wrote Rebel Without a Call.

24:25So James Dean, being a teenage rebel, is built into his artistic and real DNA at the same kind. And that's an interesting movie to think about from a young adult coming of age. Where does that fit in?

24:37Jeff:Somebody takes you under their wing, and it turns out he's the screenwriter who created Rebel Without a Call. I don't know. Like, how could you not write it? And so he gets interested in film and screenwriting very early, independent film. But he had this character in his mind, you know, a hodgepodge. The characters in this book are sort of taken from pieces of his own life and recombined and put it back together in different ways. And then he wrote this line. I guess that's just one of the perks of being a wallflower. And that for him, as you have in the notes here, was a way into the character.

25:08The reading I did, it was that plus this idea of it being letters at the same time, where it helped him get through this sort of what angle what voice how am i going to approach this but this first person self-aware narration so it's first person narration where in it we are getting we are meant to believe these are real letters not just sort of interiority or whatever let him unlock sort of how he would approach this character where it's confessional and anonymous and then narrated sort of immediately in the simple past where this happened, then this happened, this happened. And then from there, he sort of, I don't know, I don't want to say it's been, probably when this book comes out, you're like, wow, we're going to get a John Green-like career of some kind.

25:56But he ends up being a screenwriter and director, most notably rewrote the screenplay for Emma Watson's version of Beauty and the Beast, wrote the screenplay for Rent. He's published one other novel 2019 that was adult. I didn't read this. I don't remember anything about this. I'm not sure what else to say.

26:15Jeff:It was called Imaginary Friend. You know, he did the adaptation of Wonder, the really great selling R.J. Palacio middle grade novel. Also directed the sort of, luckily, the Cats musical movie was such a bomb that I think it wiped out the smaller bomb that was Dear Evan Hansen around the same time. A very, very strange career, Rebecca. I'm not even sure what to say about Chbosky at this point. Yeah, no, it's just interesting. Like, this book, it's wild that this is kind of the signal work of Chbosky's career when he doesn't seem to have been setting out to have a career in books at all. Like, he graduated from USC's film school.

26:52Jeff:Most of his work has been, as you were saying, in film. And in 2000, he edited an anthology of short stories called Pieces. But aside from that 2019 novel, like, no other literary ventures he's worked exclusively in film uh so kind of bananas to just like drop in to books and and accidentally produce a generation defining work yeah um but yeah i don't know what else to say about it they're like a really interesting guy but a very unusual career and very unusual career uh and has really just focused his work around film he did also write and direct to the adaptation of this. Right. I did think, because I think the Green books start, John Green like in 2004, 2006.

27:40So between the time this book is published and the movie comes out, we get the John Green phenomenon too, which seems very much of a piece here. Oh, totally. A little bit darker, I think. One of my, well, I'll save it for the hot takes and straight thoughts here in a minute. Let's talk about our own first exposure, Rebecca. You got this right when you were the target demo, I'm guessing. I mean, how else could you be the target demo?

28:02Jeff:Yeah, I was just I was right in the middle of the Target demo. I was a sophomore or junior in high school in 99. And like, I read this, I think right as it came out, I could not tell you how I first became aware of it. But I remember seeing this neon green cover everywhere. And the book is a weird size. It's like a small little square book. But I just have this real sense memory of seeing that seeing the MTV books logo on it. I was reminded doing my research for the show that MTV ran commercials for the book on MTV. Like maybe that's like I was coming home from school and watching TRL. Maybe that's how I saw it.

28:44Jeff:But this was just in the water. Everybody that I knew read it and passed it around. This was my first reread since. But I have remembered that description of, and we'll talk about it later, but this moment of driving, Charlie's driving with his friends and a song comes on the radio, like the weather is perfect and he's feeling so happy and just everything about the vibe is right. And he says, in that moment, we feel infinite. And like, I think about that several times a year and I have for the last 26 years, 27 years. It really stuck with me. I have read this before but I cannot tell you literally I have no idea why when I think it was before the movie came out I would not swear to that I certainly wasn't reading it in college when it came out I mean I was a senior no I'm sorry I graduated in 96 I was a junior and a senior of college when the book came out I guarantee you I wasn't reading it then my best guess is I maybe read it when the movie was coming out yeah that was early book riot days that would make sense yeah I maybe picked it up because it was very much around the same time.

29:47And it was quite short. I don't have much of a memory of my reaction to it other than I liked it. You know, I thought it was interesting and I got through it quickly and all the things we're going to talk about.

29:57Jeff:I think there's a pretty narrow age window where this book can hit you as a direct experience rather than something that you're observing. And once you're in college, it's probably too late. It's probably too late because you've already done it, right? I mean, I guess this is a good segue and what it's like to read it all about. I think it's important for the structure and perspective and reading experience to think of Charlie. The main character is a freshman, but he gets hooked up with seniors, right? In a scene that I think in reading is not really clear. And there's a little bit of hand wavy, yada, yada, why these couple of seniors would take their kid, this kid under his wing.

30:36But let's just believe this happens in - It's just a thing they do. Dazed and confused. It happens in Almost Famous. But you get access to the kids who are a little more advanced. They've seen a little bit more of life. And he himself is quite isolated because he's the youngest, because his brother and sister don't talk to him. His best friend in middle school has died. He's a waif. He's a naive person who then becomes our observer and our window into this world. And I think that's often, we get mostly in coming-of-age movies an Anthony Michael Hall and less of a Judd Nelson. Like, that's just how these things work.

31:17And I think that's interesting to its younger siblings, right? Sometimes middle, never the oldest, unless it's a different kind of a book of some kind. But we are then, in his perspective, not just from being a teenager, but in the social circle of this particular public high school. in Pittsburgh. And he falls in with a, I guess at this point, we're no longer a nerd culture, really, like high 80s. This is emo, goth, art kid, grunge. That's where this is. And these are the kinds of kids that are thinking about college, and they're not caring about football, though they go to the football games.

31:55Also a really important sort of liminal moment to there. So they're insiders and outsiders. I think that's important. The complete outsider, We get a couple of characters that are like maybe beyond the pale of description in this book, which I always find is interesting. Like the kid, he introduced himself to the locker at the end. And he's like, hey, I'm sure. He's like, yeah, I know who you are. It's like, whoa, what's that kid's perspective? They're completely outside of the pale there. But they're close. They're not within, but they're close enough where they can move in and out. And that the permeable membrane of the main of high school life, we feel the puncture going back and forth.

32:27Both comes as exciting and sometimes very dangerous and sometimes very painful.

32:30Jeff:Yeah, that they're not the cool kids, but they're not the furthest outcast. And so that sets up like a pretty classic coming of age story. Like this is what most YA literature is about figuring out who you are, and how to exist in the world with other people. And I think anybody who's ever felt like an outsider, which is all of us at some point, and that's the magic of how these books work, can see themselves in Charlie, you can feel seen by the book. there is just a really powerful you're not the only one about this book and chaboski conveys it without saying it directly which is i think one of the main reasons that this works there's not an overt like this is not a trevor project it gets better video like there is a reason and a use for those and they are like certainly important but there is something more powerful we come around to this a lot on this show about showing rather than telling.

33:27Jeff:And Chbosky is showing that that you can be a lonely kid who's experienced all the things that Charlie has, and still find your way through. And I think the book just like in terms of what it feels like it really nails what it feels like to be experiencing so much of life for the first time. Like, there's excitement and anxiety and wonder and confusion and this like overarching feeling that it's all very important and awareness in the moment that you're having a formative experience or like what the kids today would call the core memories like Charlie has awareness at times that he is forming a core memory that this is this thing that's happening to him right now is something he both wants to be inside of as deeply as possible, because it's going to be central to his life and understanding of himself.

34:17Jeff:But also, he can't help seeing it from a little distance with that awareness of like, this is going to matter to me. Because at this point, we have 40 years, maybe a little bit more of youth culture in the bank, sort of going back to Bill Haley and Rock Around the Clock post World War Two. And he's consumed Greece, probably, or at least seen or knows about Greece. He knows about the John Hughes movies. He knows about Rebel Without a Cause. It's funny, the scene of his own cultural imagining happens around his brother going to college. At one point, he even says, I hope he's having the kind of college experiences like you see in the movies.

34:53That's his access to it, right? So he's very, at times, self-aware, but in a way that I don't even understand most of us aware about how much of our experience of things were on the press of his experiences are mediated by seeing representations of it in other forms, whether it's parenthood or death or marriage or vacations or whatever else that might be. There's very few experiences that most of us have that haven't been grist for the art mill at some point. And then how to see, does any of that hold up? Is it bull? Can I take any from that? Is it helpful for me? Is that helpful for me to all?

35:31because he both does and doesn't get works of art that help him. He both does and doesn't get friends that help him. He both does and doesn't get family members that help him. It's sort of picking from these little places, sort of scrabble up the climbing wall of making it over the top into being an adult. And I think that's the kind of structurally that makes sense because this transitional time, I don't know there's a way around it. This is one of my straight thoughts. Is there a way to do 15 better? Can someone perfect the way to do 15? And I think you really can't. Because as you say, you're becoming physically, sexually, intellectually more mature.

36:08And it's not a binary switch where you go over the top one day versus the other. Maybe that's an older way of thinking about adulthood or something like this. But it's gradual. It's different for everyone. Your own situation makes a huge difference from it. And we talked about this forever. There's just no way of navigating, pre-navigating the awkwardness. There's no real driver's ed for being in relationship to other people romantically, interpersonally, or whatever, when they themselves also don't know how to drive.

36:34Jeff:Yeah, there's no cheat code. It's emotional bumper cars out here, Rebecca. It's Mad Max Fury Road when it comes to being a person in the world in high school. It is, yeah. There is no cheat code for it. And I think that that's one of the reasons that reading it, it felt like it generally holds up, because that is just so universal. but Chbosky also I thought really wisely mostly refrains from giving time anchored references so like we get a few book titles but they're older books that Charlie's teacher is giving to him we get a couple song titles but for the most part like we don't have a lot of like this is 1991 happening on the page so that you can map on your own teenage moments to it that is certainly what I did when I read it, you know, eight years later than when the book is set.

37:24Jeff:And it just really generally works. Like there's some language, some gender dynamic stuff. There's homophobia on the page that's outdated, but like, boy, were they accurate in 1999. Like, this is a maybe an interesting thing. Also, if you give it to your kids is like, no, this really was like, how teenagers talked about dating. This was how gender dynamics worked. This was like what the sexual politics were like in high schools in the mid 90s. And that's really, really different now. Yeah. I also want to give O 'Neill's warning about epistolary form. Remember everyone, be careful out there when you're getting letters or diary entries and feeling like you are closer to the character.

38:07You are not. You are farther from the character. And this one I think is especially seductive because of this anonymous. I didn't I even look for like, I don't even think we're supposed to be able to guess or know or have any idea who this person is. Like, it's not

38:20Jeff:given any clues. It's beside the point, though, it's fascinating to think about Charlie himself thinking there's a real person. But that real person, he is masking his own. He's like using the letter writing version of one of those things that mask your voice and you sound like Bane or something like that. But even that, because it says he even thinks that a diary can be found. So he's worried about that. So that's part of O 'Neill's warnings. Remember, even people writing diaries, they think about. But there is a writer here. And because it's anonymous and because they don't have contact, that's about as close as you can get to feeling like Charlie's giving you the full dope.

38:55But even that, Chbosky could have chosen an omniscient narrator, a different kind of first person. That distance is interesting because Charlie is narrating, narrativizing, and storytelling and mythologizing his own experience as he goes.

39:10Jeff:right that's important to think about here i think it also serves the function of lightening the heavy moments a little bit that like because they've already happened yeah yeah and there's a there's like a two-week period where none of his friends will talk to him because he really bones it at a party um and like you know hasn't been able to tell the girl he's dating that he wants to break up with her so he takes this moment of truth or dare where his friend dares him to kiss the prettiest girl in the room and instead of kissing his girlfriend he kisses sam the girl he's really in love with and it just like it ruins everything nobody talks to him for two weeks and if we're in charlie's head in a first person yes omniscient narration of that as it's happening i think it's just harder to sit with and a lot darker but because he's he gives us the like we're not actually with him in the first two weeks there's a letter that he writes where it's like i haven't talked to anybody in two weeks.

40:05Jeff:So he's already started to process it. And that makes it a little more just easier to navigate your way into than sitting with the real like immediacy of it, or of him, you know, his friends telling him like, just leave and we'll call you when it's cool to interact again, and that he doesn't know if they're ever going to call like, I was genuinely so stressed out. It happens pretty quickly. I think that it's a great point. And I think a way Sometimes you can A-B test the universe that way. Think about if this was written more like the secret history. Because remember those stretches of the secret history?

40:38Like, are we... Spoiler work of the secret history. Are we going to kill Bunny? Are they going to find out what's going to happen? And it's super stressful. I think that's what Tartt was trying to do. She was trying to make a page turner. She's ramping up. It's after something a little bit different here where there's not a lot of narrative tension. You're not reading this for the story to figure out what's going to happen. Because it feels like it actually happens in high school. It feels kind of random, right? Like this happened and then this happened and we went to the dance and there was this night or whatever.

41:04And so that after the fact narration from his point of view, it's already happened. It feels a little safer. It can move a little bit more quickly. And then Chbosky doesn't have to do weird things about like, what is he going to admit to himself? What he isn't? Like he's very much in his own head. I'm going to bring a straight thought up to here because you mentioned that truth or dare. Has anyone's life ever been made better by a teenage truth or dare or spin the bottle experience?

41:27Jeff:No, we should outlaw both of those. This is advice to all 13-year-olds who haven't gotten in these situations yet. Realize this is a 0 % success rate of working out great for people. This is Russian roulette where there's a bullet in every chamber. Do not do this. And I'm not even saying this because it's bad. It's a moral something. I'm looking out for you. Yeah, you're not going to be glad. And look at all the culture. There's never a moment in a book where someone did truth or dare and everyone found out the truth and there was a bunch of healing involved. This is not how it works, people. Yeah.

41:59Did you ever play Spin the Bottle?

42:02Jeff:Yes. Okay, we'll save that for office hours.

42:07Jeff:Yeah, that's... Yeah. Let's see, back to the book. Very clipped, non-descriptive language, right? He's not trying to be a fancy, smart guy writer. And it's very focused on the events of his life. There's some rare diversions or random thoughts. But unlike, say, I keep going back to Catching the Rye, and that's because of all the reasons we talked about, there's less to sort of thinking about the world. If he is thinking about the world through the prism of his friends or sort of the immediate moment here. It's so immediate and descriptive rather than analytical or diagnostic, which I really appreciate it, especially in Charlie talking about his experience of mental health problems.

42:46Jeff:Like just the way, the fact that he talks about them normalizes it. And Chbosky must have been intentional about trying to de-stigmatize these things, but it never, like therapy language is not a thing yet in the culture and the book never approaches anything like that that charlie talks about what it feels like to be in his head he talks about the feeling that he can't stop thinking or that he's going to the dark place but we get to know what that experience is like rather than his intellectualized version of it and i think that made it very relatable as a teenager too because like who among us has not had at least a moment of feeling like oh my god if I could just unplug my brain.

43:30Chbosky was very intentional in this I did read an interview about writing a gay character who certainly struggled and that was a part of their story but also super like the funniest most confident person in the book I think is Patrick and otherwise a super round character so that was very much at play and it got me thinking about I think the signal coming of age popular artistic work is my so-called life from this era. There's a one season, 1994. And there's a character in them that is, it's a very similar dynamic along the ways. Oh, yeah, that's right. Ricky. Ricky, I think I haven't seen it in a million years.

44:06It was only one season, whatever. But I kept thinking about my so-called life over, also an MTV property.

44:12Jeff:Yes. Fascinating to think about. I watched it a couple years ago because it is just like a handful of episodes and it still really hits. It does. It's so fascinating. A fame kind of like it was the freaks and geeks of the early 90s. And the freaks and geeks was the freaks and geeks of, I guess, the late 90s. And it was like it was so frank about everything. Like my parents let me read whatever I wanted, but I was not supposed to watch my so-called life. I was, I think, a little younger than the characters. and I remember sneaking it when they weren't around or watching at a friend's house and being like, oh my God, they just get me.

44:49Yeah, Jordan Catalano, important for a lot of people there. Yeah. Let's move into Stray Thoughts. I think this is probably our longest Stray Thoughts collection here because we know of what we speak when it comes to this era.

45:02Jeff:Yeah, really so many. But I really wondered, seeing the kitchen sink of it all, if in these like pre-2000s, whether young adult authors really felt like they had to like shoot their one shot and throw everything into a single book in case they didn't get another crack because it really is astonishing how many of the big issues are present here. And its similarity to how packed forever is made me wonder like, is that what was going on before we had a really robust young adult literature? It's interesting. What else you got? The Mr. Keating effect is so real. like charlie's teacher is his name henry bill bill bill um bill is like he's in teach for america so he's basically fresh out of college and 20 24 maybe yeah 24 25 and he's giving charlie extra books to read uh because he sees something in him like they're just a couple notches shy of oh captain my captain but i spent a lot of time thinking about how it's so common in these stories for it to be the English teacher.

46:07Jeff:It's not just that it's a teacher who sees something in you and takes you under their wing. And probably some of this has to do with like writers had this experience with English teachers. But this like sort of magical English teacher effect that is really brought to life in dead poet society is really, really present here that Charlie starts to understand some things about himself and the world through these books. And he feels then that this teacher gets him too. And just that idea that somebody gets you. And that these feelings of not being gotten can lead to your own artistic work is, I think, really powerful.

46:43Let's see. This was one of mine. I'm sorry. I'll dovetail on you. Is Charlie smart? So we're told at the end, Bill says, I don't know, Charlie. I don't know how smart you are. You are so, not only of my students, but, and again, these are capably written letters. But did you read this thinking we've got a real one on our hands with Charlie?

47:04Jeff:He's so innocent that it's really hard to tell. Yeah. I didn't buy, I buy a teacher taking an interesting kid who likes to read News at 11, but that note of like, not only did I think you would like this and it was interesting for you, but you were like sort of singular. That was a bridge too far for me. It would have been fine if it's just like, I saw you like this. I saw you were getting something out of it. I'm so glad. I wish you the best. I think you've got a lot of, that's enough. That's all we have to do there. Let's be careful out there. I think there's like a second part of that conversation that's important though, because Bill does say to him, and I'm saying this to you because I'm not sure that anyone else ever has.

47:40Jeff:Yeah, you know why? Because he's not smart. No one else has ever said it because he's not that smart, Rebecca. He's fine. I think that maybe he is laying it on a little thick because Charlie needs to be hyped up. He needs to be glazed. I think that the part that was in it for me is that he gets an alternative idea of a life, right? Bill has this girlfriend. They're artistic. They're living together. There's something on the other side of what he's seen and because i think that's something that doesn't get represented very well like we got a lot of my so-called life in the real worlds and stuff but we didn't get you're 26 and things are going okay right you're not just the man in the gray flannel suit or you're not taking mother's little help first or you're you're not like how do you help someone imagine the possibility without that because this is something i've talked about with my own kids is like i didn't really know what was possible out there to be an adult i didn't know that being a professor was possible.

48:31Turns out it wasn't for some of us. But like that was a thing that you could pursue or like this kind of, like, you know, you see what you see and you're innocent. You don't know what you don't know. I think that's maybe the critical thing that teenagers don't get. They're more expert in their domain than I am about high school at this point. But what they don't know is what they don't know and how short this actually is, right? Yes. And what can come next. And there's ways of being happy and being different in the world that you haven't seen represented on screen. A, because you don't care about adult fiction or whatever at this point.

49:03And B, it's unwritten because the future is yet to unfold. And so I think that's the part I really liked is he got to see, and I'll say this, this is maybe too much TMI, I found out this is something my students really like to see about me when I was a college teacher. Like they were super interested in my life and my relationship with Michelle and when I started having a kid. And I wasn't like, you know, I was just, I'm not saying I was like life goals or anything like that but that that was a possible outcome was super interesting to them because they just never seen it before

49:35Jeff:yeah it's like when your therapist tells you something about themselves you know yes and you're like oh a window into the life of this person that has a role of authority in my life and they seem like they've got it together I love that note and I really loved how well Chbosky captures and I think it's just a byproduct of the time but how well he captures how unsurveiled and unsupervised we were then like charlie leaves school at what like 3 p.m and for several days doesn't go home until late in the evening because he's trying to avoid his girlfriend calling on the phone and nobody knows where he is in that time and no one is worried because everybody's just out and about like there's no find my friends there's no what is it life 360 like whatever the other apps are that parents use to know where their kids are or that kids are using to know where each other are like they're just out there and it like that level of unsupervisedness allowed teenagers space to explore themselves and to explore the things they were going to run into in adult life and like some of those things are dangerous or can be you know like sex and drugs and drinking can all be dangerous but they're also all things that we all have to learn to navigate.

50:54Jeff:And they learn them in this peer group with other people who are bumping like emotional bumper cars, as you were saying, like, they're all making these mistakes and conducting these experiments at the same time. And I really felt some longing and some nostalgia for that. Yeah, that's, that's, that's really interesting. I love this idea of how many infinite tattoos are out there. There have to be a ton of people with tattoos that say infinite from this, like, there are a billion playlists on Spotify with I feel infinite, we feel infinite in that moment, I felt infinite, like I went and looked and I scrolled until I got bored.

51:30Jeff:And then there were still more. The Let's Have It Out Joe award, you're sort of proposing this for moments of emotional candor that clears the air and allows the candor. Were you thinking when, what moment is that for you? I think it's the moment. Well, we needed a Let's Have It Out Joe moment instead of the moment where charlie kisses sam but there there is a good moment with him and sam later where she's like this is like you gotta handle stuff you gotta show up in your life you can't just keep prioritizing everybody else and since we identified this when we talked about little women earlier this year i've been seeing it in other books like these moments where characters just sort of are fed up with each other and are like fuck it we have to say it let's just say the thing let's do it let's so like that's my let's have it out joe award here goes i guess to sam for telling charlie how it really is i think that's i think that's good i think that's it's fascinating because it also could have been that moment where he does kiss sam rather than what's her name again bad move you don't like the stage putting people on front street like that's a real tough thing to do to someone but he is trying to be honest like because he feels that the dam must be broken in some way.

52:44Let's do that in private. That's the coward's way out.

52:47Jeff:Yeah. Yeah. Or it's dumb and reckless, but cowardly. I'm not sure about this. My note here is, did John Great take Chbosky's career? Did he get market corrected by John Great? I don't think Chbosky had a second YA novel in him. I didn't see anything related to that. He was a movie person. This was his entree to be like a screenwriter, a staff writer. Like this was his book that got him into the next level. I wonder I guess related to this like if Perks of Being a Wallflower got cited in the comp titles when John Green's agent was shopping his debut has to have been is there a right is there a like look we have a demonstrated market for these kinds of stories especially about young teenage boys and let's let's get in there um one of the most cited phrases is we accept the love we deserve we think we deserve.

53:36That means what exactly to me, Rebecca? Is this garbage?

53:40Jeff:Okay, I have this in notable quotes, because I genuinely thought this was an Oprah, Dr. Phil thing. Like, I'm pretty sure that's where I first encountered this idea. But it's the it's kind of a like, unintentionally victim blamey situation of like, you're in a you're in a shitty relationship. And you're tolerating being treated badly, because low self esteem, is like is the theory like you're letting people treat you badly because you don't think you deserve any better and i think there's a nugget of unconscious truth to that but it is not the whole story in bad relationships or it's certainly it's not the story and abusive ones but it's it's one of those things that also sounds like dorm room wisdom yeah i i i was like i i'm rejecting that i mean there's maybe something there but it feels so tried and self-involved that i like I really, really thought it was Oprah.

54:34I was conflicted about the letters to this anonymous person. I think it's interesting from a structural point of view. That's the writer. Let's Chbosky himself do interesting things. But also, like, would anyone in a million years do this? I just... He's so lonely. It does not pass the smell test to me. Yeah.

54:52Jeff:I really... I guess so. It had been so long since I read it that about halfway through, I paused and had a moment of like, is he actually writing these to someone? Or is this all just a construction? and like two pages after I wondered that, Charlie talked about getting a stamp and walking the letter down to the mailbox. I was like, oh, I guess he's actually doing it. Yeah, I think you could have the same book just without the dear whatever and love Charlie and get rid of, you could have the same book and it's all narrated in the same person and the same simple past. And readers are, we don't ask that we know where these sort of consciousnesses are coming from.

55:30We understand books. That's my note. We understand how books work.

55:32Jeff:It's not the best, but it's also not the worst. Because the worst word goes to, it ends with us. And the diary written as letters to Ellen DeGeneres. That is a true disaster. Unforgivable. Never to think about. My next is, what do we think of his mixtape? Depressing. The mixtape is depressing. This is not how you, I mean, I don't know. This might have worked on somebody in 1991. one but opening with the smiths and then going to simon and garfunkel and then a whiter shade of pale then some nick drake moody blues smashing pumpkins blackbird by the beatles and landslide by fleetwood mac like this is an existential crisis yeah this is a real drip i made mixtapes around this time and i've got some notes on the mixtape a couple of these are one the 70s nostalgia in the 90s was real, but this is too much.

56:26There would absolutely have been Led Zeppelin on this. I think the thing that's absolutely missing, and I think there's something Chbosky's not calibrated correctly because he's too old, is there would have been hip-hop on this. There absolutely would have been hip-hop on this in some way by 1991. It could have been Sugarhill Gang, it could have been Beastie Boys, it could have been whatever, but there would have been hip-hop of some kind on this.

56:46Jeff:This is just not a let-me-make-you-fall-in-love-with-me kind of mix. It's just not fun. It's not. There's a sleep by the Smiths on there twice. Yeah. Black eyeliner. This is a black eyeliner mixtape. This goes into my window. The high school experience become a thing. Again, I've got the earliest nostalgia core one was American Graffiti, which actually is great. I love this movie. I think it holds up terrifically. Some combination of car culture, popular music in high school is a prelude to college like that becoming more of a pipeline after the GI Bill. and I think we're still living in car culture meaning freedom and a defined teen culture I think that's a lot happening on phones but happens other where popular music and then high school as a prelude to other things and again look at our reading lists even in this the pre-lapsarian one is sort of go tell it on the mountain and little women and think of the coming of age of little it's all over the place in there is no public high school like it is a mess like I'm now going to be a governess.

57:47I'm getting married. I'm not going. You were just out there. You're just out there, man. There wasn't this even interstitial period where you have a chance to figure it out.

57:55Jeff:Yeah. And their social lives are so constrained and directed and defined that this is pretty new. And then it turned out to be a pretty actually temporary experience of adolescence. That's not how teenagers are experiencing it for the most part today, this sort of really unsurveilled freedom. Like, you know, I mean, I had this at the time that I read this book, my parents both worked, I got home from school, like three or four, there were a couple of hours where nobody was in my house, you could go to a friend's house that their parents might not be home for another several hours. Like, we threw the parties, they did not look like the parties and can't hardly wait.

58:32Jeff:But like, we threw the parties, we did the things they're like, you would leave the house and your parents would not know for sure what you were doing. Yep. I do like that Charlie has moments of getting out of his own head and imagining the lives and futures and inner working of others. That's a little unusual for a kid. And if I'm going to give him some props for maybe being manic pixie dream boy or whatever Bill thinks he is at the end. That's fair. So I'll just read a little bit of this. I think, this is a quote, I think about all this sometimes when I'm watching a football game with Patrick and Sam.

59:03I look at the field and I think about the boy who just made the touchdown. I think that these are the glory days for that boy. And this will just be another story someday because all the people who make touchdowns and home runs will be somebody's dad. And when his children look back at his yearbook photograph, they will think that their dad was rugged and handsome and looked a lot happier than they are. I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs and I hope they believe me. I think that was my favorite bit of the whole book.

59:29Jeff:Yeah, there's a bit, I think, right after that where he says, maybe these are my glory days and I just don't know it because they don't involve a ball, something like that. And really nails it. he also has a moment like that where when he's starting to feel depressed, he's like watching all of his friends experiencing something together and he feels on the outside of it. But he recognizes that if he weren't depressed, it's the kind of moment that would feel good. It would feel like unity. And it's just this mental health moment that is skewing his perception of what's happening there. My last three thought, and this is really existential and personally meaningful, is Is there a way to do adolescence that doesn't make people identify with books like this?

1:00:09Jeff:I don't know. I just think adolescence is hard and weird. It's like the best version of a root canal.

1:00:20You're still pulling the nerve out of your head, but maybe it doesn't have to be as bad. I think it's the loneliness I think about. Is there a way to make, and maybe that's what art is, and therapy speak, and counselor, and, you know, trying to be aware and present is like... And it can feel very lonely. And it is lonely because you're only going through it in your own particular way. And Charlie, at his best moment, sees himself as part of a process, right? It's seeing a sort of like a larger ecosystem of life. And this is just a stage in it. But that just is doing a lot of stage, a lot of work in that sentence when you're 15 and a half, right?

1:00:54It doesn't feel that way. And I don't know, it's possible not to feel that way.

1:00:57Jeff:Yeah, it feels like you're going to feel that way forever. And he does get those little glimpses that there is another side to it. As Sam and Patrick graduate, as his brother comes home from college and tells him what it's like, as his sister gets ready to go to college, he's starting to see the possibilities and that maybe he's not going to feel this way forever. And then my sub one, was this a good experience apart from the traumatic stuff? Like, you know, Aunt Helen and then, you know, his friend in middle school killing themselves. apart from the actual bad stuff, is this good? Is this a good experience?

1:01:30And that's a question I have about my own high school experience. And maybe we'll get into that a little bit more in the office hours at the same time.

1:01:34Jeff:That's a real question. Notable quotes lead us off. Yeah, well, Goodreads favorite is that one about we accept the love we think we deserve. So stay real, Goodreads. Yeah, I reject that. We're gonna pop that one off. That's our first pancake here. I swear we were infinite. I know you like this. I like it too-ish. This is just the, I don't even know if I like this so much as when I read this in 1999. Yeah. And I was, you know, driving my first car with my friends on Friday nights with the windows down and like semi-charmed life blasting. Some third-eyed blind. I felt infinite. Giving you existential freedom, right?

1:02:15Yeah. Yeah.

1:02:16Jeff:And in fact, like a year ago, that came on when Bob and I were driving home from dinner one night on like a warm spring night. The windows were down and the sunroof was open and they're like, da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da, started playing. And I was like, oh, my God. And we just drove and sang. And I was like, this is, as the music went down, it was like, that was a Perks of Being a Wallflower moment. Like, in that moment, I swear we were infinite. It's not how I would have labeled it as a teenager, but I knew exactly what he meant when I read that when I was 17. I mean, what does he mean? it's i think it just feels like you're connected to something bigger it's transcendent free and connected at the same time yeah i don't know that there's there's a paradoxical feeling of that i was it's rona go ahead finish that oh it's just it's just that transcendence yeah go ahead yeah ron and i were driving around sunny day beautiful like bluebird weather 70 degrees sunny we're driving around we like to listen to music all the time but especially ron and i when we're just the two of us driving we're all the windows down and we play music loud and we you know take that's what's different now is you can take requests i plug in spotify and we have the entire catalog of human musical output in there and i was we were talking about our favorite sunny day songs like you know there's a couple songs that if i play them on a day like this i'm like wild stallions being transported back in time and i don't feel i feel i know that time has changed but something unlocks is unleashed I get connected to driving my 1982 gold Honda Civic around you know in the summertime in Kansas with the windows down on the way to play basketball or softball or whatever I was doing and you do feel like you're part of something bigger and it's you get sort of Whitman time avails not space avails not like all of a sudden for a moment it's just one of those magical things that music can do.

1:04:09Jeff:Yeah, music and smell. Yeah, music and smell that music can really do it. And that you can, once you make that memory, you can go back and unlock it. You know, like, like you're saying, we can be here 30 years later driving around and still having those moments. I love how central music is to these friends lives. Like there's a one of my favorite lines is Sam saying Patrick used to be popular or Charlie says Patrick used to be popular before Sam bought him some good music. Like that's, that's real. You hear, you start to hear something a little more complicated and a little more interesting and you get a little more interesting.

1:04:44And they

1:04:45Jeff:just, they spend all this unstructured time together, like just hanging out. And I do think that like kids today have lost access to just the art of the hang. The teenagers in my life talk about like the difficulty of just hanging out with friends and everybody not just being in their phones. Oh, my God. Yeah. You know, like, I spent so much time just like sitting on couches in people's basements. And they're doing the same thing in the book. And Charlie says, I don't know what it was. And I know we really didn't accomplish anything. But it felt great to sit there and talk about our place in things.

1:05:23Jeff:And you're just you're like starting to unlock really what connection can be, really what those conversations about the big things in life and the most sensitive things about your own experience can be like with people who are there with you and want to listen to you. And it's, I mean, I thought Chbosky just really captured that beautifully. I'll go down to a couple. Let's see. I finished To Kill a Mockingbird. It is now my favorite book of all time. But then again, I always think that until I read another book. So that's real, especially when you're a bookish teenager where you may have literally 30 36 books you've read on your own that you haven't read for class.

1:06:00Right. And it's fun to have teenagers in my house and really to just have kids because any movie or book they read literally could now be their favorite book of all time just because there's not that much data. There's a 3 % chance that one of the 33 movies you've seen is your favorite movie of all time. And even then when you see later him recommending his books to his friends, they're just every book he's read because he got handed down to them. They just don't have data here. They're still acquiring data to make sense of themselves and their worlds. And they over-index on the data they do have because that's all the data they have, whether it's To Kill a Mockingbird.

1:06:36Oh, a straight thought from before. Naked Lunch is some crazy work for Bill to recommend. Go Google yourself Naked Lunch. I forgot about that.

1:06:43Jeff:Isn't that the one that Bill recommends when he's having an off day because he and his girlfriend were fighting? I tried to read. I've read Naked Lunch, and I did it sort of as I was making my way through lists of books. And I know this is a thing. and that's that was i consider myself an intelligent person not as smart as charlie obviously not charlie but i was like what in the living hell is going against that um this is patrick and i'm not sure i know what to make of this so i present it to you rebecca do you ever think charlie that our group is the same as any other group like the football team and that the only real difference between us is what we wear and why we wear it yeah and then there was a pause well i think it's all bullshit and i'm not sure what he means by that like what's bullshit that there is a difference or there isn't a difference does he think the different does he think the idea that they're different is bullshit or the idea that they're not different is bull i think patrick would say that my reading of it is that he thinks the idea that they are different is bullshit like because patrick's in love with a football player who is closeted and he is Patrick like very clearly sort of exists outside of the social group boundaries like he's in the theater kid gang who's performing the Rocky Horror Picture show but also he's an avid football fan he goes to the games and sort of has found his people that he feels comfortable with but I think he's one of those kids who sees like the social demarcations and the popular kids and he knows that that's all a facade like he knows that the popular kids are not actually happier than anybody else.

1:08:21I guess maybe I have more modern language for I think it's constructed, but real that difference. And that was my own experience of my life. And maybe it feels real for that.

1:08:31Jeff:Yeah. I also like this little observation that feels a little bit more grown up. He was at Bill's house visiting them. And he says, Well, then after a few minutes, it was time to leave. I don't know who decides these things. It just happens. And that's like, suddenly, that's because they don't live in the Midwest. So nobody slapped their thighs. And well,

1:08:52Well.

1:08:56Jeff:All right. Anything else you want to do for? I think I hit all my notable quotes. For you, Rebecca. I think if you're talking from 2026. Yes. If you're looking for a time capsule or like a Polaroid of what it felt like to be a teenager, especially in the last days before the Internet, this book will get you there. Yeah. maybe not trigger warnings or sexual assault there's there's a bunch of trigger warnings honestly in here this is not what's the highest art coming of age story oh do we know the answer to this question this just this question just occurred to me i'm not prepped and so i apologize i am unprepared to answer this send us your emails zero to well read at bookriot.com yeah tough romeo and juliet i don't know i don't know what we're doing it doesn't need to be high art but like no you're coming yeah if you're coming from an adult perspective and you want like a high art experience it's just this is not a book that you're in for the writing this is a coming of age story like it's ya because like as we know and i've been told a million times because i've got an unpopular take about the house on cerulean sea on the book ride pod which is fine i don't care i stand by it we can have different ideas that a young adult capital y capital n is a teen protagonist written from their point of view.

1:10:14They're the main character largely dealing with teen issues. But we can write about teenagers doing things from an adult point of view or, you know, that's larger and other kinds of ways of thinking about these things. It's not written for a 15-year-old to see themselves.

1:10:33Jeff:Yeah. It's written for some other version. So maybe that's a good... Shoot us an email, zero to wellread at bookwrite.com. Immortal questions aren't asked Which of these are primary here Here's our contenders What is the good life? What do I owe my neighbor? How do I know what I know? Is this all there is? How to deal with the certainty of death? What else might there be? What's the deal with good and evil? Free will, real or no Largely, what is the good life? Charlie navigating what he wants from his life How to make friends Woven through that is some What do I owe my neighbor? How do you exist in community?

1:11:09Jeff:There's also some how to deal with the certainty of death because his Aunt Helen has died. That was traumatic for him. And there's a little what's the deal with, maybe not what's the deal with good and evil, but what's the deal with people who do bad things? Because his Aunt Helen, we found out at the very end, sexually molested him when he was a kid. And it's pretty subtle. Like, this was one of my stray thoughts is would you get away with that subtle of a reveal of something like that today? And I'm of two minds about how subtle it is. Yeah, I'm not sure. That's a really good question, Rebecca.

1:11:40I don't know that you would. I think that's where it maybe verges into adult fiction.

1:11:47Jeff:Yeah, you have to be able to pick up the thread that that's what he's talking about. but he's realized he has real empathy for her and some real like understanding that she was the way she was because she was abused by men in her life and that what she did was bad and she was responsible for it but that she was not necessarily a bad person so he's sort of tangling with with all of those things it's not we're not ringing all of the big life question bells here but you get a good handful of them i think one question that maybe it's actually a lot it has to do a lot more art than it's not here and because of who i am it will not ascend to the pantheon question but like what to do with boners is also very much a question fella and lady and all all kinds of a soul boner or you know whatever you want it but like that's a stand-in for sexuality romance like love the whole thing yeah yeah you weren't ready for that that's really interesting if we map that immortal question back onto all the other books it's a lot more than you would think it's a sub It's a sub-question of what is the good life, I guess.

1:12:52Jeff:What's Hamlet doing with boners? Jeff, are we sure that this book is not about art and writing? It 100%, it absolutely is. Yeah. Well, writing, I mean, we didn't really talk about this. Charlie is writing. What is Charlie getting out of it? He's getting something out of it. Like, it's therapeutic, right? Like, we know journaling and diaries are therapeutic. And he feels it. He even says it, I think, over the course of the book, right? Like, I feel better because I do this. Yeah, it helps him process. Like it's about what writing does for the writer, but then he's also on the receiving end of writing with all of these books that changed his life.

1:13:26So since I'm in the middle of my first time through The Sopranos, I'm seeing everything The Sopranos Lens. The therapy frame of that would have been in the water in 1999. Totally. This idea of like talking to this, even this anonymous third person is a useful narrative construction.

1:13:42Jeff:And like also in the water at this time is a lot of angst about the psychology of teenage girls. Reviving Ophelia is out right now. That's right. Eating disorders are having a big cultural moment in the mid to late 90s. Oprah is talking about all of this stuff. So it's interesting and I think special in this moment in YA that Chbosky is writing about a boy who's experiencing these things. because we were like, the moms were all talking about were the girls gonna be mentally healthy and safe in the late 90s. But I don't think we were having that conversation about boys.

1:14:20Yeah, let's see. Oh, could you get the most of the gist from watching the Signal adaptation, Rebecca?

1:14:26Jeff:I just watched it for the first time. I think technically, yes. But like the real magic is in Charlie's voice and the letters. And I think you can only get the full impact of it from reading the book. I am going to say this is one of the rare ones where I think the movie can stand in pretty damn well. I think the thing, my memory that jumped out, I did not rewatch this. I know Ezra Miller is now a super fraught person to say the least. I don't know anything about him. I'll Google that later. But he is unbelievable. I think he steals the movie. Yeah, he's great. My memory is that he steals the movie.

1:14:59He's unbelievable.

1:15:00Jeff:He was so compelling. And I did think that watching it, like, especially the moments where he's performing as Frank Inferter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, like being sort of life of the party really brings to life the Patrick character in a way that Patrick in the movie is better than Patrick in the book, for sure. Movie, musical, TV series, or Muppets? Okay, I have a policy that I want to put forward about this right now. And I don't want any new adaptations of Perks of Being a Wallflower unless everybody promises not to fill it with therapy speak. Like this works. They didn't have the tools then.

1:15:33They don't get the tools now in an adaptation of it.

1:15:35Jeff:But I would take it as a jukebox musical. That's like, if you wanted to gear it to my generation, you could do original recipe millennial with like dashboard confessional, third eye blind, Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette. I'm in charge here. So also counting crows, but you could do one for like every, do the Gen Z version, do the Gen Alpha version with their music and just port the story around. I think that would work. Yeah, there wasn't one grunge. I mean, I know 91 was, that was both 10, no, 10 was 92, but Nirvana is talked about in the book and it didn't make the mixtape. That's my biggest beef and I will not accept that.

1:16:11That's not a problem. For this particular, I do not need another adaptation. I think the one that we're there is quite good. good quite good uh trivia adaptations rumors mr tomato quotes and more rebecca i'll guess i'll start emma watson is the reason this film got made this was her first movie after harry potter chaboski said this in an interview she loved it she wanted to play this and then the funding and everything else came around it he got to write and then not just write the screenplay but direct the damn thing because emma watson like she had that much pull at this particular moment hard to remember how big of a deal it was she's still a huge star though i think she's more famous for being Emma Watson now than for being an actress, which again, nice work if you can get it.

1:16:52But Emma Watson wanting to play Sam and do that part is the reason this movie got made.

1:16:57Jeff:Yeah, as I said, there's tons of playlists on Spotify with I Feel Infinite or some variation. I got curious about other titles from MTV Books when I was looking for trivia about this book. There are some real gems. None of them have done well. I can't believe these are real. I know. There's a series called Bard Academy, and the entries all have plays on literary names like Wuthering High, The Scarlet Letterman, and my favorite, Moby Click. You know what? My hot take is MTV books deserve to go out of business. Yeah. There's also one called Oh My Goth by Gina Showalter that was allegedly so bad that the author yanked it from publication and rewrote it.

1:17:43Jeff:That's pretty bad. Yeah, MTV Books did not stick around for long after this book comes out. But they relaunched in 2023. Whale Fall by Daniel Krause. Big book. I know you were a fan. Like, was on the New York Times. That is a weird... It's going to be made into a movie. This is a weird... What? Yeah. That is such a weird thing for them to do. Yeah. Daniel Krause, like, is the highest profile author that MTV Books has had since the relaunch. But the relaunch also does not seem to be going great. Like the MTV Books Instagram account has not posted since December of 2025. And I couldn't find any like updates about other new books coming.

1:18:18Jeff:So I think that MTV Books is maybe just, you know, not meant to be. Tough, tough, tough. Hot takes. Would you like to begin or would you like to begin? I mean, we talked about it already that there's really like, I just did not buy it that a 15 year old boy who had a big brother and attended public schools in 1991 didn't know what masturbation was. I did not believe it. that he didn't know that the word there was a word for it no i think he doesn't know what it is and like he he like discovers it and then is right we had sex ed in middle school in kansas yeah that might be one where maybe chaboski being just eight years older i wonder that that i bumped up against that too it's like what are we doing here i didn't believe it at all there's this moment where sam kisses charlie because she wants his first kiss to come from someone who loves him.

1:19:10Very tough stuff.

1:19:11Jeff:And I think, like, maybe my hotter take, I think that's really selfish. Like, in the book, it comes off as kind of sweet. In the movie, you're like, oh, this is so mean to him. Like, she thinks that she's doing him a favor. But he gets to kiss the person that he's been fantasizing about and knows that it's not real. Like, it just, this is not the heroic feat that Sam and that Shabati presented as me. I don't remember, do they do this scene in the movie where they're, like, they're performing in Rocky Horror where they're like rubbing again. Did they do that in the movie? Okay. Yeah. Also, that very much goes into what do I do with this boner question.

1:19:44That's a very tough, tough spot for Charlie.

1:19:47Jeff:Yeah. And I also think if you're over 21, you're probably too old to read this. Yeah. My related one, this is both the best argument for and the worst argument against stories about 15-year-olds that are for 15-year-olds. It is, but it's also by its nature limited in important ways. But I don't have a better way. I mean, I don't present to know better a different way. But I could feel myself bumping up against the, and then what? But yes, you're almost there. You're almost getting it. But you're also 15, and that's okay. All teen rebel stories of drinking and angst and whatever they have now have blurred into me into a slurry of yes, and it's real, and I get it, but it's not for me.

1:20:25Every generation needs one to reflect their particularities, but that is all surface clutter. I get it. I think I've got a handle on the coming of age story. There are different ones, and they're different. Like we're going to do some recs and read-alongs. I'm going to go off book a little bit. I think it's more interesting to see different cultures, but I think I'm good on white straight kids who like art in public high schools. I think I'm covered.

1:20:48Jeff:Yeah, I think we've trod that ground. Yes, I think I'm covered. Yeah. All right, let's do read-alikes then. Yeah. My first one is not a novel at all. It's a memoir, Stay True by Wah Soo. I like this. Which came out a couple of years ago. And I remember when I read it, it's a memoir about a friendship that he forms in his freshman year of college. So he's a little older than these characters. But Sue goes off to college, doesn't really know anybody. He is a kind of a Charlie character. He's a quiet, artsy kid. He's been through some stuff. And he befriends this frat guy. And they form a really deep friendship that is surprising to both of them about who the other person is under the surface.

1:21:28Jeff:And this is a memoir about this life-changing early adulthood friendship. there is a scene where they are driving around in a car listening to music and I remember when I read the book being like oh they're having a perks of being a wallflower moment just an amazing beautiful memoir we talk on the br pod about like never pass up a memoir by a new yorker writer yeah and stay true is one of the best and was nominated for a bunch of awards the year that it came out I think also spiritually kurt vonnegut's collected commencement speeches with advice to young people is a fun place to go. That collection is called, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?

1:22:05Jeff:And it comes from Vonnegut exhorting people like to paraphrase it. I urge you when you are having a moment that is wonderful to pause and notice that you're in that moment. If this isn't nice, what is? Yeah. And Charlie is discovering the magic of that, of being in the present and in the middle of something wonderful. Catcher in the Rye, an obvious read-alike and an inspiration. What's your sense memory of Catcher in the Rye? right now, Rebecca Shinsky, are you like, I remember liking Catcher in the Rye? If we were to read it tomorrow, we're like, because people may not know, but it's now seen as what, like dated and it's like a red flag, if it's on the red flag on your dating profile.

1:22:45Like, I'm not sure where we, I think that's where we are.

1:22:46Jeff:I think we need a redemption tour for Catcher in the Rye. And we will give it one when we do it here on Zero to Well Read. Because this is a book about what it is to feel like to be a teenager. And it captures that well. I remember loving all the stuff about phoniness and really liking Holden Caulfield's voice. I got to read it as a teenager before there was this sort of cultural aura of like, you know, before we had come all the way around on it. I do think if you're like a 35-year-old man and Catcher in the Rye is still the book you relate the most to. I think that's a wonderful point. I think that's fair.

1:23:21That's been entered and accepted into the record. Right.

1:23:23Jeff:That's the red flag. But if you're 15 and reading Holden Caulfield being disillusioned with the, especially the adults around him and all the kids who are kind of fake posers, like that's a persistent and prevalent feeling. I think Catcher in the Rye works. Yeah. Maybe I'll read, I haven't read it in 20 years, so I could be wrong in my current lens. But my memory of my own reading experience when I was in my 20s, I think, maybe in late teens was pretty interesting. Oh, you didn't have to read it in school? I don't think so. Again, I'm fishing here for those particular things that are foundational.

1:24:02I had the larger John Green corpus. You have specifically looking for Alaska here, it looks like.

1:24:07Jeff:Yeah, which I've not read, but the internet recommends looking for Alaska. Did you read looking? No, sorry. Fault in Our Stars. Yes. Did you read that? Yes, I did. So the knock on the green averse, and a lot of YA, frankly, that has really hyper literate, super smart adult written dialogue in teenagers mouths. That's the converse of Charlie isn't smart. It's like, oh, those kids are too smart. I don't know what I want. Maybe it's unfair to put it that way. It's a real Goldilocks situation. Yeah. I've got a couple recommendations that aren't for exactly like this thing, but this movie came out seven, eight years ago, Edge of 17, starring Hailey Stanfield.

1:24:42Yes. And Woody Harrelson is her history teacher. I think, I don't think it's English teacher. And I just thought it was delightful and it hits a lot of the same points and it feels more modern. It's a little bit, it doesn't take itself quite so serious, though it's still serious. And I think Harrelson's a great, and I think that teacher is reflecting on all these teacher moments. He's much more gruff. He ultimately comes through for her when she needs someone, but he's much more like, Jesus, come on, can you pull, you know, there's nothing really special about her except she keeps coming and ultimately he will show up for her, but it's not because she is uniquely interesting and beautiful and wonderful and needs saving.

1:25:19It's like she shows up. She's as worth it as anybody else for him to pick her up one night and make sure she's okay. I'm going off book here a little bit. I think if you're coming of age, let's expand our minds. There's lots of different ages to come up in an environment. Yes. We did Go Tell on the Mountain by James Baldwin. We did Little Women. I would suggest this was a huge hit that no one talks anymore about. Man Child in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. I don't know this book. Four million copies. it's about growing up in the inner city as a black man and it was raw and the realities of growing up in the 40s and 50s the bell jar sylvia plath she's 19 but she's moving the city and trying to make her way in the world um you know uh the other one i was going to say here dante and aristotle discovered the secrets of the universe yeah that's a great one sayings two young latino guys in the 80s in el paso who are growing up figuring out their own sexuality their relationship to each other.

1:26:14Some great parents in those books, if I recall correctly. Again, there's a lot of different... They're hitting separate beats, but I guess what I'm finding is let's do... You know how you could do a Shakespearean remake in the world of high finance? Let's move these perspectives around if you're trying to get more perspective on it. Now, especially if you're in one of these identity or one of these eras or any one of these geographical locations, it may speak more directly. But if you like coming-of-age stories just to like them, Spread it around a little bit. See what else is out there. Take a walk with your original life.

1:26:46Jeff:Go watch the new Netflix adaptation of Forever by Judy Blume. That's set in contemporary LA about black teenagers dealing with revenge porn and all the ways that technology, that they are surveilled and supervised. It's sort of a contrast to this story. Cocktail party crib sheets, Rebecca. I don't think people are bringing this up in a cocktail party that don't exist. But if they were, Rebecca, what would you say? I mean, the specifics of teen angst are different for all of us, but the themes of it are universal is the big takeaway. And also that few things in life are as magical as being with friends on a warm night with the windows down and your favorite song turned all the way up.

1:27:25I think that's pretty good. I think that's pretty good. Also, when you haven't read any books, reading a book is great. Yeah. It is.

1:27:35Jeff:It is. Books are magic. Final beat, our zero to well-read score. Each one gets a score from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. Our five vectors of evaluation are historical importance, readability, current relevance, and central questions, book nerd, read cred, and oh, damn factor. Historical importance, Rebecca, is low. It is. I think it's like a three. It's not a zero, of course, but a three. It got a movie. People read it. Two Million Goodreads is not nothing. But does it stand out? Is it first amongst the coming-of-age classics? Stay tuned, I guess. I would say no, but it's more important in its time than it is.

1:28:11Jeff:Yes. I think. Yeah. Readability is quite high. I would say a nine or a 10. It's really easy to take down. Current relevance of central questions. We have, I suppose, made the arguments. This is a nine or a 10. Yeah, I think it is. It's quite high. Quite high. I think on the other hand, the book nerd read is quite low. Yeah, because it's like it's historical position is a question mark. at this point. I think we're probably, we're like at a two here. Yeah, three, maybe. Yeah. Any book at all is a one, right? You get some credit. Right. O'Dam Factor. This was tricky for me because I may have underplayed how natural Chbosky makes this feel, right?

1:28:57I got a little hung up in our discussion here about the structure and narrative form and some of those meta things, but there's not, outside of a couple of moments that feel like a little two, two, I want to give credit to naturalness. Yeah. And I think it gets a little more credit. I mean, I can't go more above a six, but I'll go above a five.

1:29:18Jeff:And when the book was fresh, the oh damn factor was high. Like it really hit the audience that it was intended to hit. So I think in the, in 1999, this would have been like an eight, but now I'll give it a six. Six, something like that. Okay, cool. you can visit patriot.com slash zero to well read for detailed show notes free newsletter and membership options you can follow us on socials at zero to well read podcast and email us zero to well read at book rat.com this is a klaxon for y 'all you high school middle school teachers english teachers out there you know what coming of age stories do kids relate to which ones maybe we don't know.

1:29:57How does this one evaluate? Please be our emissary into the hormone-fueled, needs maybe just a little bit more deodorant ranks of the hallways of middle school and high school.

1:30:09Jeff:Never have I been so glad not to have children. I think one thing that's gone away is showering after gym class. I think that was... Oh, they don't make them do that anymore? I just don't think you do that anymore, is my understanding. Thanks to Thrift Books for sponsoring this season of Zero to Well Read. And Zero to Well Read is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. Rebecca, I hope you can find a CD of Counting Crows or a 90s Spotify playlist to blast on a warm summer evening sometime soon.