Response to Looking for Alaska

This is a book I really, really enjoyed, but I wouldn’t call it faultless. There were a couple things I didn’t quite buy into, but all in all it was very enjoyable.
A big reason I liked it so much is because I can hear my friends talking the way the characters talk. The conversations they have sound like something my friends would say. I really grew to love the characters because of that, and also because they seemed to genuinely care about each other but also had a ton of fun. The scene that springs to mind for me is when Pudge and Takumi have the following exchange:
He [Takumi] pulled out a think headband. It was brown, with a plush fox head on the front. He put it on his head.
I laughed. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s my fox hat.”
“Your fox hat?”
“Yeah, Pudge. My fox hat.”
“Why are you wearing your fox hat?” I asked.
“Because no on can catch the motherfucking fox.” (104)

This dialogue absolutely slayed me. I laughed out loud, and that was one of many times I did that while reading. I can hear my friends saying things like that, and that allowed me to connect to the book. And it wasn’t just the main characters, all of the dialogue felt very real to me and not concocted to make a point. It was just very…sincere, I guess. It wasn’t presumptuous and it didn’t feel fake, with everyone, from the students to the Weekend Warriors to the teachers and parents, it just felt exactly how those people would talk.
I also really enjoyed the motif of the last words. It kind of held everything together, and I like that we never really find out Alaska’s last words. We know some of what happened on that night, but there is no way to really know her last words, and I was really relieved about that. Had there been some character who heard her, like a policeman or a truck driver or something, I’m afraid that would have been really contrived and unrealistic. I don’t know, maybe it would have been just fine, but I tend to think that the way it ended is better than anything that would have been connected to her last words.
The mystery of the book was really enjoyable as I read. I wanted to know what we were leading up to, and I found myself trying to guess. Will Alaska and Pudge make out? Then, after they do make out, will they have sex? Will Alaska drop out of school? Will Pudge take the blame for something and get kicked out? I just had no idea, and I did not see the death coming. I just thought that format for the book was really cool. Though I did find myself trying to figure out how long anything higher than 30 days actually was. 117 days doesn’t mean a lot to me, three and half months does.
The one aspect of the story that stuck in my craw a little bit was how quickly Pudge seemed to change when he got to Culver Creek. He seemed like such an outcast back home, and when he gets to prep school a few people who are really well known take a liking to him, and he fits right in. I’m just not sure I buy that quick personality change. Over the course of a few months, maybe, but not the day he arrives.
Finally, I have to talk about the things going on in this book that I just can’t get behind. It glorifies smoking, drinking, casual sex, and foul language, and I’m not on board with those things. And so it brings to the question of, how could I give this to a student and feel good about it? I know the point of this class is not to be thinking about how we would teach it but rather the book itself, but I couldn’t help coming back to that question as I read. I don’t want my students doing any of those things, but that’s what the book is about and it makes it seem totally normal and acceptable. And it’s a problem because of how much I like the book. If I hated it, I would have tossed it aside and never even mentioned it existed to any students. But it’s so good that I want people to read it. Argh.

Response to How I Live Now

I felt a little weird about How I Live Now right off the bat because it’s written in such a rambling style. There’s very little punctuation, and I don’t think there are any quotation marks anywhere in the book. It just quotes people without quoting them. That’s very strange to me. Whenever I see stuff like that, I wonder what the purpose is, and almost every time I eventually decide that the author is just trying to be clever. And that bothers me, to be perfectly honest. I don’t want a clever author, I want a good book. To explain a little more, the main problem I have with clever authors is that they can’t explain the decisions they make when it seems to need an explanation.
First point of the author not being able to explain her cleverness when I felt like it needed it: This war that’s going on. What is it? Who is it? When is it? I was really confused the whole time because I didn’t know what was going on. I kept hoping and waiting for the war explanation to come, and it just never did. And I understand the kids were pretty cut off from the world, and so they didn’t have a lot to go off of, but I wanted the explanation to come from Osbert, or maybe the family Daisy and Piper go to live with, the military family. See, I feel like the author wanted to create this “World War III” type feel to the book, but she didn’t want to think about how the war started, who it was between, why it was carrying on, or what it accomplished. She just cast that stuff to the side and moved on. I wanted to know what was going on, and from what I could tell I don’t think the author had a great reason for not putting that stuff in.
Second point of the author not being able to explain her cleverness when I felt like it needed it: Living in the woods. Really? This girl has been living in a big house with her English cousins for a few months and I’m supposed to believe she’s suddenly turned into Robinson Crusoe? How does she know all this stuff? She’s finding food, putting up shelter, and getting them around with a map that doesn’t tell them much. I know survival instinct can kick in, but that still doesn’t drop knowledge into your head. If I was put out in the woods in the middle of nowhere like that, I’d be dead in approximately 23 minutes. I just can’t believe that Daisy has that in her.
Third point of the author not being able to explain her cleverness when I felt like it needed it: The ending. Completely unsatisfying. She picks up the phone, and six years later she’s back in the States and the war is over. I’m sorry, what? What happened? We’re just skipping all that? Okay, I guess we’ll skip that because what happened to Edmund has to be really interesting. Is he dead? Did he get home? Oh, okay, he’s home, and he saw all those people die. But is that why he is the way he is? There’s very little explanation regarding Edmund’s state at the end of the book. Again, I feel like the author just didn’t want to think about it. It just happens too quickly for me to take it seriously.
I also have to add that I am just not okay with the cousin sex relationship aspect of this book. It happens pretty near the beginning of the book, and it threw me off right away. I know they don’t know each other so it’s like meeting someone new, but still, they are cousins, so stuff like that shouldn’t go on. And it makes me wonder again what the author’s intent is. Am I supposed to be okay with this type of relationship? Is it supposed to make me view Daisy and/or Edmund in a certain light? Is it supposed to tug at my heartstrings? Because it doesn’t, it just grosses me out. I would have been perfectly fine with a really close friendship that even bordered on love but with no sexual aspect, and I have no idea why the author decided to make that such a prominent part of the book.

Response to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The first thing that struck me before I even started reading this book was the title and the use of the word “Indian.” In our age of constant political correctness, I didn’t know what to expect when I saw the title on the syllabus, a book about a Native American or somebody from India. Of course, upon receiving the book it was quite obvious, and as I got into the book I was surprised to find that everyone in the book used the term Indian. I suppose the events happened a while ago, during a time when those terms were not necessarily considered offensive, but it still surprised me a little bit.

The difference between our “normal” American culture and that of the Native Americans was a huge reason that I enjoyed this book. The biggest example for me was when Junior’s grandma dies and he says, “Each funeral was a funeral for all of us. We lived and died together” (166). This is philosophy that is not very prevalent in our culture. We tend to think “Every man for himself” and things like that, but in this culture everyone is connected and feels like they’re all in it together. I suppose that’s why it’s such a big deal when Junior leaves the reservation. Everyone else stays in part because that’s what everybody does, and by leaving Junior has forsaken that mentality. His friends see him as a kind of traitor, but he really is making the best decision he can for his future. The interesting this is that not everyone, and in fact very few people, see it that way. The best thing for the future is to stay on the reservation and remain connected to your family and friends, no matter the quality of life. Junior sees a different reality. He wants to do something in the world and the only way to do that is to attend a different school, so he makes that decision knowing that he will be scorned. He is now a part of two different worlds, and really not a total part of either one.

As we grow up, we are constantly trying to figure out how to best fit in to the culture around us. A very funny example of this comes in “The Unofficial and Unwritten Spokane Indian Rules of Fisticuffs” (61). In his reservation life, Junior has a schema that he understands in regard to fighting. But outside of the reservation, the rules are completely different. Junior punched Roger because that’s what he understood he was supposed to do, but Roger walked away and Junior was very confused. He had followed the rules that he knew, but the rules were different here. Junior has changed his schema to fit into his new understanding of the world, and I think everybody does that as they grow up, not just adolescents. We have understandings of the world we live in, and when something doesn’t fit into our understanding either we disregard it or we change our understanding to make it fit. Junior didn’t just change his understanding, he expanded it, something very few people on the reservation seem willing to do. And as he changed his understanding of the world, he changed his understanding of himself as well. No longer was he a freak Indian kid like he seemed to see himself through his drawings, but he was accepted by other kids and a star basketball player. So much of our personality is defined simply by how we see ourselves, and when he was able to see himself in a different way, he was able to see the world and his situation in a different way as well.

One part of the book that did bother me a little bit was when Junior’s new team plays his old reservation high school and beats them by 40 points. Junior is ashamed for beating his old teammates because he knows they don’t eat enough, have abusive parents, have no future, and various other problems. Here’s my problem: Had the reservation team won that game, NONE OF THAT WOULD HAVE CHANGED! Look, I love sports, the main class that I teach is Sports Literature, and I watch them a lot. But I detest the notion that winning a game makes anything better. Had Wellpinit won that game, the kids would not have had more to eat, would still have abusive parents, and most likely would still have not gone on to college. The game is simply that: a game. To be so ashamed because you beat another team full of kids that have a hard life does no good. If you really want to help them, don’t let them win a basketball game, give them a bag full of groceries or a place to spend the night. Even with how much I enjoyed this book, this scene left a sour taste in my mouth.