Wordsmoker

It’s where book Skippy got his nickname!

It’s been nearly a year since I read it, so my thoughts will be hazy and lack hard facts. Dennis is the dorky science kid?

I thought, for one thing, it was great in displaying kids that age, without dumbing them down or oversmartening them up. Their deft usages of the word “gay” were stellar.

I liked that it was haunted in the background by Catholicism, particularly in an Irish boarding school, without going overboard and having it be ALL about that, yet the current is throughout, and IS on some levels ALL about that, much like Catholics I’ve known, who it’s just part of their being, whether they buy into any of it whatsoever or not.

Lady teacher seemed a touch like a male writer’s wishful thinking. She was pretty dang flat.

You ever read whichever Boyle that is with the jungle exploring? Fucking fantastic bit in the middle, visiting some tribal kingdom, that basically just rewrites Dorothy & friendz initial arrival at Oz, only boogedy jungle kingdom, and it was only after reading through it I went, “Hey! Wait a minute! This is fucking Oz!” School dance was like that for me.

Howard’s the teacher, yeah? Haha, he was such a doofus. Though he made some good observations. His bit about the sort of American his wife is was good…something about her notion of what an Irish husband would be like, and him knowing he was no such thing, and the marriage doomed.

I didn’t buy lady teacher would bang him, except lately I wonder if they drank the punch, too, and realize they maybe musta. They did drink Schnapps or something godawful, didn’t they?

Wait, what was the surprise twist?

Carl was not well.

But Carl sure does become a hand of god there, in the fire. Carl was occasionally almost sympathetic. Awful, awful dude, but there were still glimmers of scared little kid in there.

Or have I got the wrong bad kid?

Oh! Yes, I thought the foolish and naive use of pills was also very true to These Kids Today.

I didn’t want the pedophile priest to turn out to be a pedophile and then he did in nearly the worst way possible, if there’s a worst way, just total betrayal of what his good works or whatever were supposed to accomplish, and his justifications and evasions and guilt and racism and bla bla bla, they were pretty richly realized, I thought.

It kept almost being some cliche of an Irish Catholic boarding school, yet always pulled up and veered instead of settling into bullshit. That was really skillful, I thought.

Also, I’m really glad it didn’t do some clodhopper Mark Twain vernacular accent thing ever. It so coulda.

Poor girlfriend girl. I got sad for her. She wanted to be more than shallow.

The doughnuts were described well. They sounded tasty.

Yeah, I didn’t make much of the fat/thin thing at the time, but, oof, though I was fine with it? The whole salvation by taking a bite of the doughnut thing, I kinda went, “Ouch.” Way too pat.

Oh, yeah, the airplanes! I liked that too. Just some really, really vivid scenes throughout. Quite lovely, too, even when describing something horrible.

Lori’s friend made me sad, too. I mean, we all remember girls like that, and they were a sad, sorry mess.

The string/M stuff was also very true to a clever high school kid’s creative magical use of what he’s learning, that’ll pull into Sillytown because of how fucking enormous kids’ brains get for a few years there.

Oh, admit it, Rosie. Being a girl is all sunshine and lollypops. Smooth sailing.

I forgot about the WWI thing, but, yeah, to me it doesn’t come off as necessarily just the author’s obsession, but natural to the sort of character Howard is. Especially the way he delves into it to escape as he’s falling apart, and the way the headmaster or whoever attempts to leverage it as control. Plus, hahaha, it was interesting. That helped.

Oh, right, that fucking font with Bethani. Yeah, no.

That museum trip was hilarious, and even suspenseful, I thought.

“Paris Trout”, when everybody trashes the dude’s boat. It’s funny, but tragic. Read “Paris Trout” if you haven’t. “Paris Trout” was great.

The Automator is so very classically kick-in-the-ballsable.

“Water Music”! That’s the T. Coraghessan Boyle book with the jungle Oz scene that will stick with me like the school dance scene, till the end of my days.

Read that, if you haven’t.

I’m not remembering the dinner sequence AT ALL. But again, been a long time.

And, oh, right, the stealing drugs from your mom scene. Again, actually suspenseful. Made me feel like I was stealing drugs from my trash mom, if I was trash and she was trash.

‘Night all. Anybody out there who didn’t read the book should read it, before the definitely gonna be shitty movie version comes out.

Oh, but also? Never got around to saying this, but Paul Murray definitely seems to be one of those writers who laid out a great big diagram before he started writing. Sometimes the diagram showed, because he didn’t put enough art stuff on it.

But that’s fine. Still did a way better job than most out there.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD3xbGhtSZQ&feature=related

Oh, do watch the above. Hilarious. Screen goes blank and there’s the lady on the panel reflected in the screen, in her bathrobe, recording it on her phone.