C. D. Payne

This book is a hilariously honest presentation of how a modern 14-year-old boy (maybe teen, but not quite a man yet) sees the world. Some of the details easily date the material back to the early 90's, but that only added to the nostalgia for me. Nick Twisp, the story's protagonist, is a nihilist-in-the-making. With the right mix of constant embarrassment and the unraveling of his home life, Nick starts down a destructive path that most of us would only halfway fantasize about.

The pacing is show more quick, and the dialogue is spot-on given Nick's desire to sound more elitist and brainy than his age. I recommend this book if you ever seek to understand the mind of a 14-year-old boy minus the larger-than-life destructive tendencies. show less

I didn't think it'd happen again but not since Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" did I ever think I'd finish a 500 page novel this quickly. This book, on loan from a good friend, was just what I needed to read after the brilliant but dreadfully heavy "The Garlic Ballads" by Mo Yan. After a book like that I decided to lighten it up a tad with this work which, really, could only really be described as a farce. Not in the negative sense mind you, not at all. By 'farce' I mean it's a show more funny, well written, almost precociously clever (and incredibly dark) sex comedy. Pretty much everything modern Hollywood sex comedies try to be and fail at so miserably.

Nick Twisp as our not so humble narrator is like Holden Caufield except with less a preoccupation with angst and more his crotch. Granted, he's a fourteen year old American male and anything less than that would be unrealistic to the hilt but instead of playing it up for drama, C.D. Payne mines this for all it's worth with pretty fucking hilarious results. This is no doubt helped by Nick's incredibly bulky and almost cosmically snobby vocabulary. If only for its esoteric word choices this book is a word lover's delight, something in league with Saul Bellow (though with the snobbery and condescension meant to be played for laughs as opposed to be gobsmacked and in awe of). But the work is, surprisingly, more than that.

The novel can be taken superficially, no doubt. It's a horny teen falling in love with his object of teen lust (who also happens to be his intellectual equal if not superior) and all the gleefully unpleasant shenanigans that result from Nick basically being a selfish shit to the other people around him who are, for the most part, as bad if not worse than him, and all for the purpose of copulating with the object of his affections Sheeni Saunders. But if one digs just a little deeper they'll find a brilliant satire of not only modern American Romance but of modern America (of the early 90's anyway) in its entirety. Granted, this isn't always on full display in the text, but Payne has a keen eye for the superficialities of his (our) culture and the comical vagaries between momentary attraction/lust and genuine human connection borne from like minds and like souls.

Is it a perfect read? No. The repetitious nature of the book's second act really begins to sag towards its conclusion. But luckily Payne knows just when to cut out and start Nick over in another wicked funny scenario with brilliant results. I should point out also that, as a negative, the book doesn't have much in the way of an ending. The story just progresses, develops, and just sort of stops. Now, I don't know if Payne already had the idea to continue the story in subsequent novels but, as a stand a lone work, the ending left me feeling a bit flat like 500 pages had just led to an ellipses trailing off into something beyond the page.

Other than those minor quibbles this is a comically brilliant work. Very original and definitely worth the not so considerable amount of time you'll put into reading it (like I said, it's readability is something to behold, you won't put it down until it's done). Read it to reimagine what it was like to be a horny selfish prick of a teen and all the onerously horrible things you thought you'd be capable of doing just to get to home plate with your love of the moment. show less

Another 14 year old boy's love song to his penis. Yes, there are hilarious parts. There are also mean-spirited, self-aggrandizing parts. The adolescent male voice rings achingly, annoyingly, gratingly true here. Sometimes I was embarrassed to be giggling at what I was giggling at, and to make me feel like that is quite a feat. Parts made me want to crawl under my bed and never ever come out. Not recommended for mothers of teenage boys, though perhaps it's the hold your nose and drink type of show more medicine. I can't not recommend it. show less

I read this in two days. And then my husband read it in the three days after that. Our house was filled with maniacal laughter for close to a week. C.D. Payne's dialogue is probably the best I've ever read.