How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

Wow, I think this book was written directly AT me. By turns hilarious, poignant and absurd, it chronicles the way Edward stumbles through his senior year of high school and lurches towards Julliard. Firmly anchored in the 1984 I remember, full of fumbling and humiliating yet adventurous sexual escapades, true-life misunderstandings and completely whacko blackmail schemes, this audio book had me weeping with laughter multiple times. Not for the faint of heart, nor for those who like their lovers always in pairs, or their teens law-abiding. I loved it and considered breaking into the library tonight for the sequel. The narration is excellent. Highly recommended.

This, I loved. Self-absorbed and pretentious as the narrator is – as you would expect a drama student to be - he's also funny, outrageous and charming, as well as casually and randomly bisexual. So are his assorted friends. Think the kids from 'Fame', but with more sex and drugs and – er – Frank Sinatra.

How I Paid for College is a rollicking romp punctuated with eccentricity and art. Acito's characters grow on the reader like a charming fungus, and by the end of the book one is deeply invested in rooting for their success. Edward is the East Coast bisexual theater version of C.D. Payne's Nick Twisp. Perhaps the best thing about Acito's writing is the way he manages to portray the characters' anguishes - unrequited love, fading dreams, and disappointment, while maintaining a mood of fun and irreverence.

This novel gave me a nightmare about being forced to ride through the Napa hills in the lap of a closeted gay teenage boy driving a motorcycle as his mass of shiny black curls flowed in the breeze. He wouldn’t let me off the motorcycle. I wish I were kidding.

My overall impression of this novel is that it was both aimless and horrifying. There is not a scruple to be found amongst the main characters of this cynical, oversexed ode to theater life in 1983 suburban New Jersey.

Edward Zanni is a large Italian-American boy with an even larger singing voice, about to enter his last year of high school before moving on to Juilliard to pursue his musical theater dreams. His ample-in-every-way pal Paula precedes him and he is left to cobble show more together a social life from the remaining Musical Theater rabble. He scrounges up: his ex-cheerleader girlfriend Kelly (who he routinely dry humps in front of students and faculty alike), jock-turned-actor Doug whom he would also like to hump, ever-present tagalong Natie “Cheesehead” Nudelman, and terminally glamorous Persian transfer student Ziba. This cast of clowns makes a real mess of the book as they clumsily try to have sex with one another in varying configurations, regularly defile a ceramic Buddha (which serves as a motif for the chapter headings), and perform various theater-related tasks in between. Edward’s arts-oriented mother is MIA, having split to find herself years earlier and recently gone off the radar in South America, leaving him to contend with a business-focused father and drug-addled sister.

When Edward’s father abruptly remarries, to a gold-digging German photographer, Edward finds himself edged out of his home and sans one financier for his college education. Luckily his friendship with Natie the Cheesehead has really taken off, because it turns out that Natie is a devious mastermind who develops an evolving strategy to raise Edward’s tuition money via a mix of good old-fashioned hard work (to which Edward is ill-suited, of course) and felonious white-collar crime. The whole gang gets dragged into the hijinks, including Paula up at Juilliard, and things get crazier and crazier right up to the bizarre ending.

The story is not exactly bad, I did finish the whole thing after all, but it is definitely a lot of book. The writing is good but many of the things that are supposed to come off as funny just seem cruel, gross, or (worst of all) stupid. Edward is pretty hard to like despite his struggles with his sexuality, abandonment, self-worth, and even impotence. If he doesn’t want to have sex with a peer, he looks down on them. If he does want to have sex with a peer, they are nothing but an empty vessel for the fulfillment of his carnal desires. For all his nastiness he is rather cowardly. I could see this novel appealing to a certain kind of person who feels very outside: someone with a big personality, struggling with non-hetero-normative sexuality, who really loves the theater and is very self-absorbed. When Edward wasn’t ignoring his father he was making close-minded cracks at his expense, so I found his entitlement issues in regard to college tuition a little hard to take.

The strongest part of the novel is probably the fact that Edward grows up a lot by the end of it. He is able to see the friends he has cast into various stereotypes as real people put on Earth to do something other than fill the stage of his life. He finally gets to know Kelly as a person with personality and talent rather than a stock “pretty girl” who fills out a pair of terrycloth shorts really well. The much-maligned Natie seems destined for things much greater (and perhaps more terrible) than any of the others. So it goes as well for Ziba, Doug, and to a lesser extent Paula.

This is not a bad book but it’s graphically sexual, holds nothing sacred, and is at times just plain mean. I usually read YA to avoid these kinds of attitudes. The fact that Chuck Palahniuk recommended the author for publication says a lot about the novel's sensibility, but I can’t agree with the claim that he is a “gay Dave Barry”. show less

It’s the 1983-84 school year and Edward Zanni of Hoboken has to figure out how to get into, and then to pay for, Juilliard when his father insists that he’ll only pay for a business major. Fortunately, he’s got friends; unfortunately, their ideas tend towards the felonious. A bunch of comic setpieces strung together with bare connective tissue. The characters were all trying too hard to be charming, which makes them typical teens but no more fun for that. Bonus for varying sexualities among the teens, but points off for a 2004 novel in which Edward’s 1984 observations are way too precious (Madonna’s a flash in the pan, what does that Matthew Broderick fellow have that I don’t, etc.).

Glee crossed with Ferris Bueller with a bit of Queer as Folk thrown in the mix, with the end result being more suited for HBO than for FOX.

How I Paid for College delivers everything it promises in the title as it follows Edward Zanni, class of 1984, through his senior year as he scrambles to get accepted to and then pay for Julliard after his newly remarried father refuses.

It's a fun romp, told entirely through Edward's overdramatic teenage eyes.

Note: This is about teenagers and would probably be enjoyed by a YA audience, but there's a lot of sex and a fair amount of criminal behavior. I found it in the adult fiction section of my local library.

Started off annoyed, ended up charmed. The teacher is my favorite character. The sunny angst free sex seems unrealistic but is fun to read. Father Groovy is an excellent alter ego.