All Men Would Be Tyrants If They Could by Judie Mitchell; Horace by Kevin McLean

All Men Would Be Tyrants If They Could by Judie Mitchell 

In a famous letter to her husband, future First Lady Abigail Adams wrote: “I desire that you would Remember the Ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power to the hands of the Husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound to any Laws in which we have no voice or or Representation.” 

She reminded him that if the men were going to rebel against Britain’s authority for equality, then they needed to practice equality at home as well in front of their wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, and female servants and employees. It was hypocritical she said to fight for a voice and representation when they won’t permit women to have theirs. 

Aside from the title of Judie Mitchell’s Revolutionary War Historical Fiction novel, All Men Would Be Tyrants If They Could, Adam’s letter is not discussed, quoted, or referred to in the text. However, it is still very much in the background in this story of a woman enduring an unhappy marriage and a patriarchy that forces her to stay in it.

In 1773, Abby Goodwin is unhappily married to the much older John. He abuses her so her homelife is a constant battle that will soon come to a head now that thoughts of revolution are sweeping the country. Abby and her more outspoken sister, Connie are also inspired to make some changes in Abby’s own life. 

This is an effective fascinating look at what life was like for women in Colonial and Revolution-Era America. As a new country was being fought for and created, women were also swept up in claiming independence in their own lives including the rights to education, having a profession, being self-sufficient, and the right to shape their own lives and destiny as the men were doing around them. Abby is a textbook example of a woman who was made to feel that she didn’t have any rights until she had to stand up and fight for them. 

The book has plenty of graphic moments that illustrate exactly the hellacious reality that Abby was put through during her marriage. He belittles her personality and intelligence. He strikes her then blames her for causing him to lose his temper. Even though he is of the old school belief that women should not earn a living, he helps himself to the goods and payments that Abby receives as a midwife and healer. 

Unfortunately, Abby has very few options in a patriarchal society that treats marriage like a social contract. While divorce is possible, Abby is trapped by the coverture which states that a woman’s rights were subsumed by those of her husband with the wife’s legal status of feme covert that believed that a husband and wife were one person. Abby would be left without money, her daughters, her stepsons whom she has lovingly raised, and be branded a pariah. She would get away with her life but would have very little to live for.

Abby can’t find solace in a church that tells her that leaving her husband would be a sin. Even though her parents were progressive enough to encourage their daughters to become educated, they still harbor traditional beliefs about marriage to the point that Abby finds it difficult to reveal the fullest extent of Abby’s cruelty. It is a patriarchal society that men like John benefit from and women like Abby are captives.

John not only dominates his wife but other women as well. In some of the most heart wrenching moments, John forces himself onto two younger women using his position as head of the household to manipulate them to consent to his advances. Then he pits them against his wife so they can’t trust Abby enough to confide in her or expect her to help them. They are moments of emotional and mental abuse against not only Abby but these younger women who for different reasons are made helpless by their status in the household and society. They are rendered as helpless as Abby is.

 Connie, Abby’s younger sister and the book’s co-narrator (along with Abby herself) is an antidote to this male dominated society. As Abby is forced to endure her marital unhappiness, Connie is more attuned to the sounds of revolution. She represents the fiery outspoken women like Abigail Adams who wanted the ladies to be remembered and were going to use this new found independence to make them count as well.

While men like Connie and Abby’s brother fight on the battlefront, Connie fights on the homefront. She protects and shelters Abby from John’s abuse. She enters a relationship but makes her views known to her intended so he can treat her like an equal and not even think of dominating her. Connie represents the women whose goals, views, education, writing, and support will inspire feminists for centuries to come. Connie and Abby begin their independence from home and those actions create a ripple effect to inspire others. 

 

Horace by Kevin McLean 

This is a summary of the review. The complete review can be found on Reader Views.

Horace by Kevin McLean is a complex haunting psychological character study of two high school misfits whose rivalry and hatred for each other spans across decades. 

The book starts with an unnamed Narrator recalling his childhood friend and classmate, Horace Grebner. He and Horace are part of a clique of school misfits and outsiders whose main outlet is a weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons. During this time, Horace has some nasty encounters with Arthur Spinelli, a local bully. Horace and Spinelli’s rivalry and hatred continues from their teen years to adulthood when it reaches dangerous, illegal, and fatal proportions.

This book is largely a character study of two different outsiders: Horace and Spinelli. Their starting paths were in many ways very similar as different types of school outsiders. Instead of bonding, they chose different means to counter those struggles. 

Horace is a misfit obsessed with D&D to overcome a childhood of abandonment and neglect. Spinelli is a troublemaker using football and bullying as an outlet to cope with abuse. 

 

Horace and Spinelli have a series of confrontations that shape their adulthood as they take divergent paths but confront one another frequently. They are two opposing forces destined to collide in a dangerous impact. 

Horace and Spinelli’s mano y mano war becomes even more violent and intense until they have to face each other. They are each other’s mirror image, foil, shadow self, and split personality. It is the type of competition where there might be one winner but no matter who walks away, they have to become each other to survive and then lose themselves. 

I Was a Teenage Communist by JC Hopkins: Seriocomic Novel About Teen Communism Growing Up in Reagan Era America

 I Was a Teenage Communist by JC Hopkins: Seriocomic Novel About Teen Communism Growing Up in Reagan Era America 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: The teen years are a time to explore connections to the world around us. To find ideologies that speak to us, friends that accept us, and breaking familiar patterns while discovering new ones. JC Hopkins YA novel, I Was a Teenage Communist, is about that.

In 1981 Orange County, California, a group of high school misfits are fed up with the Capitalist Materialistic Reaganomics world around them. They are interested in the philosophies expressed by Karl Marx and become fascinated by Socialism, Marxism, and Communism. Despite personal turmoil in their lives, the teens surreptitiously distribute through their school a newsletter that expresses their newfound beliefs and challenges the system that they see around them.

The protagonists are an eclectic group of outcasts. They consist of: Sunshine, a trans female trying to live her life truthfully. Davy, AKA Savior is a smooth talking philosopher fascinated with religious and spiritual questions. Geraldo is a firebrand ready to embrace the paths of his friends and older brother as his world crumbles around him. Tommy is a musician obsessed with conspiracies. Tommy's brother, Barry is the quiet leader and is described as a “legitimate red.” Finally, there's Charles, Geraldo’s older brother who is a political activist and the teens’ mentor. Through an eventful school year of bullies, romances, break ups, neglect, abuse, coming out, parental separation, activism, punishment, and politics, the kids make their voices and views heard.

I Was a Teenage Communist uses political ideologies as a framework to capture the conflicted and complex personal lives of the young protagonists. That's not to say that politics isn't important. It absolutely is in this book. These kids are motivated by the society that surrounds them. They see income inequality, American Imperialism, Reagan’s reactionary policies, jingoistic patriotic propaganda, the superficial “Greed is Good'' Yuppie culture, Christian Nationalism making its first links to the Republican party, rejection towards the LGBT+ community, and a sharp decline in women's and minorities’ rights. These are problems and issues that shaped that time period and honestly haven't gotten any better in 2024. If anything they have gotten worse. It's easy to see why someone would want to embrace a political structure that is contrary to what they are faced with every day.

Even if the Reader doesn't agree with their political ideology, what they may understand and relate to are the reasons that the protagonists embrace Communism. Everyone is looking for some reason and need that isn't being filled by their known world. Geraldo is looking to make his voice heard and a surrogate family when his actual family falls apart, caught up in their own problems. Davy is looking creative freedom and for spiritual answers that aren't being fulfilled by the religion around him. Sunshine and Tommy are looking for acceptance towards their sexuality and gender identity. Barry is looking to make some noise. Charles is looking for a way to hold onto his ideals as maturity and stability hover near him. This is a lost group looking for a way to be found.

Politics is important to the characters in this book but what also emerges are their personal problems. Teenagers by and large are emotional, reckless, thoughtless, immature, rebellious for the sake of being rebellious, argumentative for the sake of arguing, snarky, obnoxious, inquisitive, loyal to their friends, sensitive, curious, and idealistic. The protagonists are all of these traits and more. Sometimes, they are written so broadly that they almost reach parodic or satiric proportions. However, there are also layers of humanity that make them whole figures that are meant to be understood and not laughed at.

The characters follow their Communist path as they are faced with various conflicts. Geraldo and Charles's father walked out on them and their mother responded by having an affair with a colleague. Geraldo begins to date Maria, an undocumented immigrant and the troubles that she endures make him even more determined to fight the system. Charles’ relationship with his girlfriend, April, becomes more complicated when his mother gets involved with her father.

Davy is torn between his spiritual philosophical pursuits and his basest sexual longings. He hops from girl to girl as much as he moves from one religious path to another. Tommy weighs a new romance with Sunshine and his acceptance of her identity. The cause means everything to Barry so he doesn't have much in the way of a private life. He tries to keep his friends as focused and driven as he is as they make their plans.

By far the darkest and most heartbreaking subplot is that of Sunshine's. She is comfortable with her gender identity in front of her friends and new boyfriend despite parental objections. Those objections graduate from words to actions as Sunshine's parents put her into a conversion therapy center. Hopkins does not skimp on the details about how the experience is physical and psychological torture that traumatizes her. Her ties to her friends are strengthened as they try everything that they can do to get her out. However the bonds with her parents are forever weakened as they allow such a cruel and dangerous ordeal to happen to the child that they should have loved and accepted.

I Was a Teenage Communist is a great mixture of how the political and personal affect young people. It is a book that is better read than dead.

Classics Corner: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen ; Definitive Book on Learning About and Teaching American History In High School

Classics Corner: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen; Definitive Book on Learning and Teaching American History in High School

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


If you thought, or still think, your high school American History class and textbooks were boring, chances are you are not alone. James W. Loewen discovered his college freshman didn't know any more about history than they did in high school.

To remedy this situation, Loewen studied high school history textbooks such as The Land of Promise, Rise of the American Nation and discovered feel-good blandly written history that focused on jingoism and patriotism and had very little analysis or depth. Loewen's book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong aimed to discover those errors and improve on the way American History is taught in schools.

"Textbooks.....keep students in the dark about the nature of history, " Loewen wrote. "History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason. " Loewen's brilliant and insightful book challenges how history textbooks are written and provides the Reader with an alternative approach to history. Even the Readers that may not necessarily agree with the information Loewen provides will appreciate the more thoughtful, critical, and analytical approach to history and receive a deeper understanding of the American past.


Loewen begins by discussing heroification, making heroes and demigods out of historic figures. History students may know of Helen Keller's childhood in which Annie Sullivan taught her to sign and speak, but may be unaware of Keller's adulthood in which she became an ardent Socialist.

Woodrow Wilson is described in textbooks as an idealistic President who helped found the League of Nations, but the books often leave out Wilson's racism in which he segregated the federal government, propositioned the Espionage Act which ordered Americans to report "suspicious activities" like speaking out against WWI, and ordered invasions of various Latin American and island countries.

"Denying students the humanness of Keller and Wilson and others keeps students in intellectual immaturity, "Loewen wrote. "It might be called a Disney version of history: The Hall of Presidents at Disneyland similarly presents our leaders as heroic statesmen not imperfect human beings. "

Loewen put the textbooks to task for how they wrote about many of the standards in American History. Christopher Columbus is not written as an intrepid explorer looking for new trade routes to the Far East. Instead, he is seen by Loewen as an opportunist who saw a country rich with gold to plunder and people to enslave.

Far from being the deus ex machina-kindly Indians who provided the Pilgrims with the first Thanksgiving, instead Massasoit's tribe once thrived in the Massachusetts area and had been all but wiped out by smallpox brought on by white immigrants.

Loewen suggests that the Thanksgiving meal was not just a gesture of friendship but a plea for survival. (And how did the Pilgrims' descendants reward that kindness? Well Loewen writes that they declared war on the local tribes and took their land for themselves.)


Speaking of Native Americans, Loewen fills his Readers on wars the whites have declared on Native Americans such as King Phillip's War in 1675 as well as textbooks' portrayal of Native Americans as either bloodthirsty savages who made unprovoked attacks on whites or childlike innocents who were unaware of how to cultivate their land and needed the White Saviors to guide them.

African-Americans have it bad if not worse according to Loewen. The textbook perspective of the Antebellum South as an idyllic Paradise for masters and slaves and Reconstruction as a time of thieving Northern "carpetbaggers" and naive freed slaves who couldn't lead their farms or states is less out of historic primary sources than out of Gone With The Wind. In actuality Loewen writes that in the post-Civil War days many former slaves were elected into offices and performed in jobs admirably. In fact the real troubles were usually performed by the disgruntled former Confederates who formed the Ku Klux Klan and whose actions would later create Jim Crow Laws and the Myth of the Fallen South.

Loewen also cites the implied racism in how textbooks portray white abolitionists such as John Brown as "being insane"(when he was devoted to the cause of freeing slaves) and Abraham Lincoln as being indifferent to the cause of slavery solely for preserving the Union (when in reality he felt that the Union could never be preserved if half of its population where in chains).

The chapters about racism should be used as a guide for current issues. Loewen's book reveals that unfortunately the Myth of the Fallen South and the inherent racism that goes with it are still with us even now in 2020. If nothing else, the fight over taking down or leaving alone Confederate statues and the support and disagreements towards the Black Lives Matter protests reveal that those historical myths are still with us and are unfortunately very hard to die. Those struggles are still fresh in our minds and despite what some say, people cannot easily "get over them." If they aren't acknowledged or certain minorities are still treated poorly, partly because modern white people used glamorized versions of the Old West or the Antebellum South as justifications for stereotyping and continuing to treat Native Americans and African Americans so horribly.


Besides race, another issue that Lies My Teacher Told Me opens up is social class.This chapter reveals that George Carlin's often repeated quote "They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it" is not too far off. As Loewens pointed out, we are surrounded by symbols of class and social structure from the homes we live in, to the clothes we wear, to the brands we buy, to the cars we drive. Unfortunately, social class cuts deeper as while Americans are so fond of repeating the "Land of Opportunity" myth ad nauseum, that they fail to notice and history classes fail to teach that those opportunities are not passed out freely nor are those opportunities necessarily based on merit. Many stumbling blocks to achieve a higher economic standards are often affected by someone's race, nationality, economic standards, or gender.

In schools teachers and textbooks are fond of the rags to riches myths such as Andrew Carnegie, Oprah Winfrey, or Steve Jobs, and fail to account that they are the exceptions. For every Carnegie who became a multimillionaire, there are countless others who work just as hard and barely eke out a living. These exceptions cause snobbishness in people that assume if someone is poor then they must be lazy or are not working hard enough. This rationale is often why many social and welfare programs are cut leading to increased poverty.


Education for example is not the same in every school. Wealthier students have the luxury of new technology, equipments, and pre college courses, while poorer students often have to make do with dated materials and hopes that they can get a scholarship or financial aid. It makes one wonder with the Coronavirus pandemic being such an issue if schools were able to pass out enough technology for students to study at home and whether teachers and students had the proper Internet access to use them. Not to mention, the most recent controversies about schools being forced to open in the fall will see a division between the schools that can afford to follow guidelines and use work and study at home alternatives and those that can't. Will the numbers of poorer students and faculty members catching the virus increase because of the lack of alternate options?


The most eye-opening chapters discuss the impact the Federal Government and Big Business had on modern history.

Loewen says that avoiding the role economics play in United States-International relations interferes with the textbooks' "international good guy approach." The United States's official word on interfering with other foreign countries is to "spread democracy", but Loewen's book shows that Capitalism and economics are the actual driving forces.

One example of this approachs is when International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) led the U. S government in destabilizing Salvador Allende's Socialist Chilean government. Other examples include Union Carbide in India and United Fruit in Guatemala.

Many of the United States' gave support in other countries, particularly in Central and South American and Middle Eastern countries and not necessarily for the good of the people. Such examples include returning the shah of Iran to his throne in 1953, bringing down the elected government in Guatemala in 1954, attempting to bring down Fidel Castro's government through terror and sabotage and many many more.

These decisions often led to generations of tyranny and dictatorships and citizen led rebellions against not only their leaders but hatred towards the United States, often taking the form of terroris organizations and cartels. Also the deplorable conditions that these countries were left in because of United States interference caused many of these people to leave and emigrate to the United States.

The book predates the recent controversies towards asylum seekers and young immigrant children separated from their families, kept in cages, and many of them found to have disappeared, perhaps in the hands of unscrupulous adults. However, one cannot help but read the chapter and understand the United States's role in creating the unstable governments and low socioeconomic standards that those people are emigrating from.

Equally powerful is the approach or rather non-approach many textbooks have in portraying the Vietnam War. Of the textbooks surveyed, Loewen said most devoted less than 10 pages to Vietnam and only depicts photographs of smiling American soldiers leaving out the most provocative memorable images like the running girl covered in napalm. In fact, Loewen says that most high school teachers leave out the Vietnam War in discussions. (Recalling my own history classes, I only remember discussing the Sixties once and that was a brief end of year talk on the music. )

While the Vietnam War was a recent event for the book, one wonders how other events are portrayed in modern history classes. While certain events like 9/11 probably could not be avoided, do textbooks refer to the U.S. interference, such as the First Gulf War, that led to such animosity in the Middle East and the creation of terrorist groups? Were the controversies about the decision go to war in Iraq and the subsequent War on Terror get a mention or was that one of the things that textbook authors left out? What about the creation of the Patriot Act and the far reaching tactics of the NSA? There are still many gray areas to explore in American History and judging by many of the attitudes that people still hold to revere or criticize the past, unfortunately they are still around.

Loewen also refers to the low prominence that history has in high school curricula of schools not hiring qualified history teachers who can study and challenge the materials. Instead the school sboards settle for social science teachers or coaches. (Anothe recall from my high school history courses: football coaches taught all our social science and history classes.) As well as the lack of experienced historians that edit and critique these books. Many of the books were published to impress the school and education boards and to make as little waves as possible. Unfortunately, as Loewens reminds us history is not like that. It is a subject that is by nature controversial and needs to be taught that way: honestly and accurately.


While the book was first published 25 years ago, it's clear the situation has not yet improved. However Loewen frequently has updated his book and has written similar ones about Historic American Landmarks.(One wonders how he feels about the statues). If blandly written "feel good" history doesn't go away, neither will Loewen and neither should people who study and know the truth behind the American History Myths.

Weekly Reader: The Rome of Fall by Chad Alan Gibbs; Biting Novel About Small Town Life, School Days, '90's Nostalgia, and Memories Good and Bad

Weekly Reader: The Rome of Fall by Chad Alan Gibbs; Biting Novel About Small Town Life, School Days, '90's Nostalgia, and Memories Good and Bad

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book that features social media 

Spoilers: This is a book that fills me with so many memories, that it almost scares me. I went to a rural high school and graduated in the '90's (Grandview R-II, Ware, Missouri, Class of '96.) So I remember so much of it, the Friday night football games especially Homecoming, the pre-social media age of card catalogs, AOL, and chat rooms, X Files on Friday then Sunday nights, and Alternative and Grunge music from the greats like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Garbage, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction, and many others. Chad Alan Gibbs' The Rome of Fall reopens those days so well, that he makes me wonder if he had a camera installed at my high school at the time, just so he could take notes for a future novel. (Or more than likely remembered his own high school years, which is the more logical theory.)

Marcus Brinks is a new kid at Rome High School in Rome, Alabama in 1994. He loves Alternative music and wants to front his own band but right now he's an outcast new kid who is bullied, particularly by quarterback, Deacon Cassburn. He goes through the typical teen hijinks such as making friends with fellow outcast, Jackson Crowder with whom he shares a mutual love of Weezer and his crush on pretty girl, Becca Walsh.

Rome is a school that takes its football team seriously. Very seriously. Pep rallies are scheduled every Friday afternoon and the football games are packed every night. The students go to the games and meet for pizza afterwards. It's a time honored tradition that everyone partakes. Even those with no athletic abilities or interest, like Marcus, engage in the social activities of attending the games and get caught up in the whole "us vs. them" mentality. Why Marcus even has a Friday Night Girlfriend in Becca. (Her real boyfriend is Deacon, but since he plays football, she needs someone to accompany her to games or take her out when he goes to the away games.)

If you didn't live in a rural school, or any school which was practically dependant on its athletic teams, and weren't interested in sports and had other options on Fridays, then you probably don't understand what football season is like in high school. The Rome of Fall is not exaggerating. If anything, it understates how big it is to some schools.

 It's easy to get excited during those Fridays during the pep rallies when cheerleaders lead spectators in cheering on the team as well as your class (Seniors usually got the biggest cheers). Even the most non-athletic students (such as this one who was a shy socially awkward bookworm with very few friends) could get swept up in the excitement and belonging. It didn't matter if the team won or lost. (My years, they got as far as district my freshman year then suffered a tremendous losing streak afterwards.) You were there in your school colors (ours were black and gold), created posters and mascot designs for spirit week (Grandview Eagles), and used those days as a time to socialize, have fun, and act as a unit. In rural schools with little options of alternate things to do on a Friday night, football games could often be the highlight of the week. Gibbs conveys that milieu rather well.

After graduating high school, Marcus becomes the lead singer of an indie rock band, Dear Brutus. They manage to release one album called The Beige Album, reportedly inspired by Markus' relationship with an ex-girlfriend and Lois Lowry's Newbery Medal novel, The Giver (more '90's Nostalgia. Who didn't read that in school or repeatedly see it advertised in book order forms or Scholastic Book Fairs?) The Beige Album sold 500,000 copies, certified gold, and received unanimous praise from critics. The group received instantaneous success until Marcus walked off stage during a concert in 1999 and the group disbanded. Marcus then spent some time in the Caribbean in isolation and solitude.

While the musical trajectory of Dear Brutus is traditional, almost cliched with the instant success, internal problems, and break up, it adds to the nostalgia for those of us who remember the music of the 1990's. Songs as varied as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Pearl Jam's "Even Flow," Sound Garden's  "Black Hole Sun," Alice in Chain's "Man in the Box," Lisa Loeb's "Stay (I Missed You)", Melissa Etheridge's "Come To My Window," Jewel's "Who Will Save Your Souls?", Sheryl Crow's "All I Want To Do," Tom Cochrane's "Life is a Highway," Blind Melon's "No Rain," Faith No More's "Epic," Green Day's "Basket Case",  and Smashing Pumpkins' "Vampire" and many many others were the soundtracks of many of our teen years. Chances are if the music was stripped down, the vocals were either mournful and melancholy or screaming and angry, the lyrics brutally honest, and the performers were upfront about their personal problems and sneered at corporate commercialism while at the same time welcomed it, then by all the Gods and Goddesses, it was our music. 

That's how Gibbs writes Dear Brutus, a sometimes satirical but an affectionate tribute to the music of the 1990's. The Readers nod in recognition comparing the fictional Dear Brutus with many of their own favorite real life favorite groups and singers.

The Rome of Fall alternates between Marcus' past as a high school student and as a rock musician and his present as he returns to 2017 Rome. Unemployed, caring for his ailing mother, and almost 20 years removed from his rock star fame, he accepts a position as an English teacher at Rome High School. While some believe that you can't go home again, that doesn't really apply when those you knew never left.

His old rival Deacon is part of the Quarterback Club. His former girlfriend, Becca Walsh teaches sixth grade. The biggest change is in his former best friend, Jackson. Once a fellow rock fan and social misfit, Jackson is a coach, town hero, and practically owns Rome. He has also transforned into a complete jerk who hides a sleazy, cheating, illegal nature underneath a "God-and-Country-Family-Values" community leader image.

 Those who would find it unrealistic that so many of Marcus' old high school acquaintances still live in town should check their former classmates' social media accounts and realize that true to life, many of them do stick around where they grew up and went to school.

Returning to Rome forces Marcus to confront his past. He can't hide from his former rock fame when his students have access to Wikipedia, Spotify, and other social media apps and waste plenty of class time reminding him of it. He also can't hide from terrible things that he did in high school, one that changed the trajectory of his, Deacon's, and Jackson's lives forever. 

He also has to confront the reality of his relationships with those he knew and wonder if he really knew them at all. Was Becca the sweet lost muse of his imagination and lyrics or was she just using Marcus and is continuing to use him? Did Jackson change and get a swelled head over the years or was he always a jerk and Marcus just didn't notice? Marcus' past is colored through rose tinted reminisces about the good old days, until they bleeds over into the present and he has to see them as they really were.

 In the present  Marcus finds himself caught between his former friend and rival, discovering that some resentments haven't changed and some emotions have only gotten stronger as he and those around him have gotten older. Once he faces the lives of those in the present, is he able to confront his past and come forward about things that he did and in which he turned a blind eye.

The Rome of Fall is the type of book that on the surface brims with nostalgia. However, it also forces us to look at those old days with a more critical eye, what really happened, how we behaved, and the troubles we faced. We will see that we did horrible things, that times were hard, that life wasn't perfect. We may still like the music, or watch the movies. We may even still go to the local football games, but that doesn't mean that life was better or more perfect. Only our memories distorted them to make them seem better than they were. Adults look at their youths as carefree and wonderful when they weren't. People in the 2020's look on past decades with fondness and longing that no one would have had at the time. (Though considering how stressful 2020 already is, who can blame them?) 

The Rome of Fall is a biting commentary that shows that nostalgia is simply a trick of the memory. There were no good old days, just days.

Classics Corner: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; An Insightful Look Inside One Year of a High-School Boy

Classics Corner: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; An Insightful Look Inside One Year of A High-School Boy

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is not a big plot-filled novel. Instead it is filled with different various incidents which contribute to the characterization of an introverted teen and his complicated relationships with family, friends, and girlfriends.

Charlie writes letters to an unnamed ”Friend.” The Friend is never revealed and there are even implications that he doesn't exist. Instead the letters give Charlie a chance to unload his deepest emotions and confused thoughts about the world around him.

Most of Charlie's entries consist of his friendship with Patrick and Sam, a quirky brother and sister who welcome Charlie with open arms and encourage him to be more outgoing. He is still grieving over the suicide of a friend and has a hard time relating to people but Patrick and Sam help bring him out of his shell.

With Patrick and Sam, Charlie embraces new things like driving down tunneled bridges while listening to classic rock. (In a terrific passage, Charlie does this and remembers how he “felt infinite.”) They also love to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Charlie at first feels out of place with the crazy costumes, bizarre audience participation, and Patrick’s portrayal of Frank N’Furter and Sam's as Janet. But he eventually adapts and becomes a proud “Time Warp”er.

He also gets involved in his friends’ complicated love lives and that bleeds into his own. He discovers that Patrick is gay when he catches him in an embrace with Brad, a closeted football player. Patrick and Brad’s relationship is hidden until Brad’s abusive father finds out. Brad, in an attempt to push Patrick away, joins in a bullying incident that puts Patrick in the hospital.

Sam and Charlie also have relationship issues. Over the course of the book they date other people but begin to realize they feel that they are more than friends. This moment climaxes when Charlie goes to a party with Sam, her boyfriend, Craig and his current girlfriend, Mary Elizabeth. During an intense time of drinking, drugs, and game of Truth or Dare, Charlie is dared to kiss the prettiest girl at the party and he kisses….Sam. Needless to say his relationship with Mary Elizabeth does not last.

There are also other characters who help shape Charlie’s coming of age journey. There's Bill, Charlie's English teacher who recommends novels for the teen to read like Camus’ The Stranger and Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. Charlie also does extra credit essays on what he reads to share that love of literature with Bill finding a kindred spirit in his teacher.

There's Charlie's sister who is involved in an abusive relationship. When Charlie accidentally reveals this, she becomes furious with her kid brother and continues her relationship in secret.

Then there's Aunt Helen, Charlie's favorite relative. She is long dead but she still remains a part of Charlie's life. She haunts his memories as he remembers her death in a car accident on her way to get him a birthday gift. He also remembers that she had some difficult unspoken incidents in her past that caused her to withdraw from others except Charlie. Opening up his feelings for Aunt Helen reveal some of Charlie's current difficulties with relationships.

There is one revelation about Aunt Helen which is brilliantly foreshadowed and leads to a definite change in Charlie's behavior and relationships. However, for an important plot point, it’s placement in the second to the last chapter make the revelation and aftermath a little rushed. It would have served better to be in the middle of the story where the aftermath would be central to Charlie's development.

However, The Perks of Being A Wallflower is one of the best examples of the life of a teenage boy and the complexities that go into those years when we are still trying to figure out who we are and who we are going to become.