The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Did YOU go to school with anyone like this?

I was a social outcast in junior high. Like many fledgling geeks of the time, I was both too mature and too juvenile to make solid friendships with people in my age group. So I managed to fit into the fringe. I hung out with the "nice nerd" with the Apple IIe and the D&D gamers around school, and learned to cope with fear and panic from day to day. High school gave me a gradual change in status from outsider to quirky-but-acceptable; since then, I've considered the ability to choose my friends one of the biggest benefits of adulthood.

When I first heard the buzz about Stephen Chbosky's book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I was excited about finding a copy. This sounded, finally, like the kind of writing I'd been looking for—the collective voice of "school geeks" everywhere, given credibility and a measure of respect.

I found a library copy one Saturday afternoon, and by Saturday evening I'd finished (it's a quick read). I'm still thinking about it, so Chbosky hit his mark in that sense, but I'm not entirely pleased with the experience. In my opinion, there are a number of aspects of being a teen which the author didn't quite catch, and a few things he got exactly wrong. I can't help thinking a lot of the buzz around this book has more to do with Chbosky being a successful screenwriter and publishing his first novel through MTV than it is based on any worthiness springing from the text itself.

For those who haven't yet read it, the book is presented as a series of letters from the protagonist, "Charlie," to some unnamed, anonymous older person; by setting up this convention, Chbosky invites you to read these letters as the recipient. Charlie begins writing just before his freshman year of high school, using the letters to express his fears, concerns, family background, and the sadness that haunts him after realizing his best friend in junior high committed suicide. Through the school year of 1991-1992, Charlie sends a series of long letters describing what is going on outside and inside his life: his friendship with the lovely Sam and her stepbrother Patrick; hanging out with the Rocky Horror Picture Show crowd; his first date and his first girlfriend, as well as his first crush; his experiences with alcohol and drugs; family triumphs and tragedies, etc.

I'd always understood "wallflower" to mean one who wants desperately to be involved, but through social or physical awkwardness is undesirable and therefore rejected by society. Chbosky seems to use the word in a slightly different context; indeed, Charlie is the most passive protagonist you are ever likely to come across in any literature. He stands by, soaking up all the experiences going on around him without making any real attempt at participation; then he squeezes himself dry writing his anonymous letters. The writing itself is a strange mix of lackluster, plodding prose and weirdly stilted phrases; when someone later calls Charlie "brilliant," even the most sympathetic reader would have to quirk an eyebrow at the description. He is prone to panic attacks and blackouts, cries easily and frequently, and is ludicrously underexposed—at his first high school party, the kids pass him a plate of marijuana brownies and he doesn't even realize what they are until he starts feeling stoned.

This brings me to another area of the book I disliked—the frequent, casual use of drugs and alcohol by underage kids. We get to see a high school freshman try (and in some cases get hooked on) cigarettes, brandy, beer, wine, pot and LSD—and aside from some lingering "trance" effects from the acid and one ironic scene where a girl who's just had an abortion tells him to stop smoking, nobody discourages him from doing any of these things. I know there are those who will justify this content by saying that it's only realistic to show kids experimenting with drugs, but that explanation doesn't wash with me. Call me a goody two-shoes, but pot and other drugs didn't play a major role in my brilliant high school or college career, and I know I wasn't the only one. It's bad enough trying to fight off teen hormones from hell without adding drugs to the mix.

Unsurprisingly, sex moves several of the storylines along. As mentioned before, one girl gets an abortion after her boyfriend impregnates her; Charlie also introduces himself to the joys of masturbation, he is witness to a date rape, and we get a look at more casual sex sites for gay men than I really wanted to see. Granted, our hero never actually goes so far as to have sex himself, but this particular "idiosyncrasy" of an otherwise healthy teenager is attributed to his wallflower nature coupled with a childhood trauma—not, say, the entirely old-fashioned idea that you might want to wait until marriage or at least true love to engage in the horizontal mambo.

Almost everyone who's written a review of this book has made note of its comparison to Catcher in the Rye, and I have to say that I disliked both books for much the same reasons—both protagonists are isolated, slightly twisted, and cast adrift in life with not even the hint of a moral compass to guide them. It is difficult to like such characters, although near the end of the book you can't help rooting for Charlie—there's a real question as to whether or not he'll commit suicide. There are a few good vignettes in the book, encapsulating what it is to be young and immortal and full of potential, but there are too many other places where the storyline breaks down into soap opera. Frankly, the geeks deserve better.

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