The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This episode of Zero to Well Read is sponsored by Thriftbooks.com. So we get to talk about books like today's episode, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chibosky, a 90s into 2000s hit about high school, one of the great modern high school novels. And there's really two editions you can get. And both of them have something to recommend themselves. There are paperbacks that use the original cover. I guess you could find a first edition. I'm not seeing any of those available here. But there's a 20th anniversary edition that has like a 20th anniversary sticker on it of the original cover and paperback that also includes a new letter from Charlie, the main character at the end about what they've sort of been up to. And maybe you want that. That's not in the original. That's not in some of the first printing, first edition paperbacks that came out. I also really like the movie tie in edition of this. I think the one I saw, it just feels so 90s. It just feels of a time and a place. That one you can get for as little as $5. Thanks to thriftbooks.com for sponsoring this season of Zero to Well Red. You can get free shipping on orders of $15 or more in the US. And every purchase gets you closer to a free book reward like a paperback movie tie in addition of this book. All right, time for the show. Welcome to Zero to Well Red, a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you read. I'm Jeff O'Neill. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. Get ready to get emo today because we are talking about the Millennial Young Adult Classic, The Perks of Being a Wall Flower by Stephen Shibosky. I should have done Black Eyeliner, Jeff. So this is a, it's fascinating because this is a book I know we've talked about over the years, like as something we both read, we both enjoy, both think is interesting. And it came out at an important time for you, but it's about an important time for me. So it's like, it's very strangely distributed over our shared adolescence and then our reading lives. And then where it sits among other stories about being in high school in America and white and heterosexual, like we can get all those things into there and how that becomes a template. It's part of a long tradition. And we were talking about this, what we're going to talk about in our office hours a little bit later, thinking about what the classics of coming age stories are, but then also like how our own high school experiences either resonate or don't with this. And this is always the tricky part of these kinds of stories, right? They need to be specific and universal at the time. They age pretty quickly out of the specifics. But then since it's sort of the same or has been sort of the same as I'm going to argue here in a minute, until like it's since like the 1950s, every generation needs their version of what the music was and what the drugs were and what the sexual politics were. And this is a frozen moment in time. And yet I think it has existed into the future in ways that a lot of these stories don't Yeah, I totally agree. This feels like a real time capsule to me. It came out when I was in high school. It's about the years that you were in high school, as you were saying. And it is so much about just like that experience of being a teenager. I think this was a pretty universal template or one of the stories made out of that universal template of coming age from the 50s up until about the smartphone era. But I feel like that has really changed. The teenagers that I'm around at least these days aren't super into era defining music that's specific to their experiences. And they're also not super into like a shared set of movies or TV shows. It's like we don't have a monoculture anymore. And this story exists inside sort of one of the last moments where teenagers had real shared like one clear set of shared reference points, at least white teenagers in the suburbs in big cities. A Pittsburgh that it both feels like a time capsule of a specific time, but also like one of the last of its kind that's possible to tell. Not that we don't have coming of age stories now, but what they're doing is a little bit different because the media that kids are interacting with is so different now. And there's a bunch of interesting structural choices the author makes. We'll talk about all those things and get into the story here and a little bit more. Click on the show notes, link in the show notes to sign up for the free newsletter. Vanessa, I'm sure we'll have all kinds of interesting emo related information from us. Take a trip back to the early 90s, which believe it or not is like 40 years ago at this point. And there's also you can sign up to be a member of the Patreon. There's a couple paid options. One includes early ad-freed episodes. And another includes that and bonus content. And we're going to do some office hours time and take a memory lane down. Trip down to high school. You can always email us at zero to well read at bookrat.com. We've gotten some nice emails from high school teachers recently. And the high school teachers out there, I want to hear from you about Perks of being a wallflower. Oh, yes. Like what if you know the book after listening to us talk, I'd be fascinated to know. I have a 15 year old in my house, like literally in my house. And we are doing this period from I'm older than the parents in this book, which is a real head trip for this particular person. And I would like to know if this holds up or how does it hold up. I was thinking about recommending it to my kids and I'm pausing not because of like the material, but I'm just not sure they'd be into it. And I'm not sure they wouldn't be into it at this point. So I'm interested in data. I would like to fly in for the focus group with your kids who are thoughtful smart readers. And I do want to hear our teenagers today still picking this up. They were in 2012 when the movie came out, the book had a major surge. But that was again, like a really different cultural moment than we're in right now. And I suspect that if teenagers are circling around certain coming of age stories, this is no longer one of them. But I would kind of be delighted to hear that it is because also the kids these days are into the millennial music. Yes. So you think the smartphone is a flash point. I, my flash point here is, I guess we'll just get into it here. And in this book, Rebecca, and you have it in your notes and it wasn't going to be in yours, I would get to put into it. The idea that this 15 year old thinks there are other 15 year olds out there that don't know or may not know what masturbation is, is I don't even know what you would call it. I'm not sure what that is because one difference, at least in my socioeconomic, demographic, political cohort is the talk about sex in your bodies is way, way, way front of mine talked about very early. And I think maybe the biggest thing that's changed since this book came out, and I wonder if there's transitional works of art or movies or stories where the idea of teenagers being difficult to navigate penetrated into the parental core, right? Because in say the John Hughes movies that immediately precede this, I think very much is 90s versions of 80s John Hughes movies. But then, but before John Green and like the modern YA movement, like at some point, I've made this, I think I've made this observation to you and others that I don't know that our parents generation, I'm going to lump you with me again, Rebecca, I'm sorry, was thinking too much about good parenting and thinking about what their kids were going through as adolescents. Whereas many, many people, I would say all the people in my friend group in court think about this a lot and maybe obsessively, and that's how we get helicopter parents. I think I don't know how that may or may not be related to smartphone, but I think that's as big of a difference. That might be more important than the lack of a monoculture for how this book is aged. Rebecca, what do you think about that? I think that's a really good theory. Let me tell the people briefly what it's about. Yeah, I'm so sorry. I'm so, I'm so getting on my adult dad high worst here that I'm getting away. There is so much to talk about, but I think that's a really nice way into the conversation. So the book is set in 1991. It's about a 15 year old named Charlie who is growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and he is the titular wallflower of the story. It's his freshman year of high school. He has always felt like he's on the outside of life, but he is especially lonely coming into this freshman year because his best friend died of suicide last year. And he's still holding on to some stuff we know from the very beginning that Charlie has been hospitalized for mental health treatment for various past issues and trauma in his life. He doesn't use the word trauma, which is notable and also a real artifact of the time in which the book came out. But Charlie is one of those kids who like he's really sensitive. He thinks too much about everything. His feelings are really big. They're often scary. And he doesn't have anybody to talk to. So he starts writing letters to an unnamed recipient. It's someone that he's heard is a good person and he thinks that he can trust this person. He's never met them. He doesn't want the recipient to know who his real, what his real identity is. And the text of those letters is what makes up the book. So Charlie is just writing to this person. He always writes as dear friend about loneliness and depression and anxiety. But again, he's not using that language because this is still the early 90s. He's writing about family issues. And eventually he writes about the deep, wonderful joy of making a few close friends. These two seniors, Sam and Patrick, who are step-sister and step-brother, befriend him. And he finally feels like he has somewhere to belong. So the book is set over the course of Charlie's freshman year. And he's chronicling this wild, adolescent ride, his first crush, his first sexual experiences, experimenting with smoking and drinking and drugs, and eventually revealing the childhood trauma that he is discovering continues to impact him. Along the way, he runs into most of YA literature's greatest hits, like peer pressure, bullying, rape, domestic violence, teen pregnancy, supporting a close friend. What is it here, Rebecca? Like, we have to almost have like, what isn't on the bingo board? It's like the real kitchen sink of teen angst and teen issues. He's got a close friend who is secretly gay. And yes, he also does have a very special English teacher who helps him see himself in a new way. A real classic of the coming of age genre. Yeah. In a way, I think you have this note a little bit further. Like, just it's all jammed. And it's not very long. Like, it happens quite quickly. It's compressed because of the nature of it, which is it's told in these letters, but they're also after the fact, right? Every time we get a letter, he's recounting something that's already happened. And it gets quite compressed, right? We don't have these interstitial periods of waiting for this thing to happen. He's only writing when something notable has occurred. So you're getting sort of the highest highs and the lowest lows of like, I'm now hospitalized versus we're driving around a car with the windows down, listening to music and aren't we infinite and all the things that go like that. So that part of it's very strange. But it is. What are we even missing here, Rebecca? Like, I don't even know. Because he's younger, he himself isn't going through the transition out of the house to college, but he's seeing kids that are. Yeah, yeah, he's seeing kids that are leaving. He's got an older brother who's in his freshman year of college this year. So he's hearing about that. Really, what's missing from a contemporary American story is any consideration of race. Yes. You know, everybody like I just watched the movie for the first time, everybody in the movie is white. It's sort of implied or assumed that most of the characters in the book are white, all the main characters are white. And that would certainly be different today. We know that the suburbs aren't all white now in 2026, not that they were in 1991, but representations and how teen peer groups are presented. Like this is just not in Charlie's consciousness at all. And it's not in the consciousness of anybody around him. Yeah. What the long life of this is interesting, because it was published at the end of the millennia, 1999, as the 90s were ending. And it's a very 90s book, like it begins in 1991, follows, you know, really through the year, 91 into 92, we get Nirvana references, then we get also the references of the kids that like Nirvana, we get the Smith references before that. And this was where YA, at least in print, was not a big thing yet, at least as it would come to be really in movies. It's interesting, I was reading Cameron Crowe's biography and the success of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which was a shock. And even that is about, it's so funny to think about this, that's about someone who didn't have the high school experience going into a high school. Right. Like that's how Cameron, like it's very, it's all very meta, right? Even, and I'm going to, I'm going to suggest later in the show, we'll talk about this, like, even in American graffiti, which is kind of as early as I could think back of like, that's George Lucas in the 70s, looking back at the late 50s of his own adolescence, even that is laden with nostalgia, right? So from the very beginning, there is this always looking back, being reflective. This is Chibosky looking at his own adolescence, right? From, he's more the English teacher character than the kid. Yes. At this particular moment. So there's always this reflective nature of it. And here it's built into the, it's built into the structure of the text, because even Charlie is looking back from letter to letter and sort of processing his own experiences at the same time, which I think is very important to think about. But that's also something we were doing in the 90s. We're very self, that's where emo comes from. We were thinking about our own thinking in ways that weren't always healthy. It's an interesting shift from the types of media, the books and movies that came before it, that were, that were really nostalgic about the high school experience, even like, I mean, Greece is a classic of the genre. But this is more like high school is really hard. And Judy Bloom did this before, we talk about it in forever, but that book is more specific to sort of a sexual coming of age. It's not, it's not as much broadly about the high school teenage experience. And Chibosky is not nostalgic, it doesn't seem for high school, the characters are not, they're not in love with the difficulties of their experience, but they have that thing that teenagers have where you start to become aware for the first time that you're experiencing something you'll never experience again. And they sort of have a, there's a dreaminess and sort of a romanticizing of a lot of their experiences that like, as Charlie grows up, maybe he's not nostalgic for the whole thing of being a teenager, but there are some really beautiful parts of it. So yeah, this is like white hot center of millennial adolescence. I'm the oldest, like in the eldest millennial group. And I was, I was a sophomore in high school, a junior in high school when this came out. It was published by MTV Books, which is the most millennial thing about it. MTV Books was a partnership or was an imprint of Pocket Books, which is Simon and Schuster imprint. And like in real mid 90s form, MTV announces this publishing project in 1996, with a contest called the right stuff, WRITE. The winner would get a $5,000 check and a contract with MTV Books to be the launch title for the imprint. And writers had to be under the age of 24 because MTV wanted, yeah, to keep it young and cool. The winning title was a book called Floating by Robin Troy, which came out in 1998 and was deemed a total dud. So like perks of being like really, it's bad. Perks of being a wallflower was the second book from MTV Books. But right to this day is like the signal book. In fact, like if you just do a casual Google, you will be told by many sources that this was the launch title for MTV Books. But it, this is the only recognizable title today that MTV Books published comes out in February of 99. It sold 100,000 copies in the first year and a half, and then more than 700,000 by 200 by 2007. So it gains steam. Like I remember this book being passed hand to hand and from friend to friend, but not a hit with critics kind of one of the unique titles of books that we're going to talk about on Zero to Well-read, like Publishers Weekly called it Trite, Kirkus called it a ripoff of Salinger. The New York Times didn't even bother writing about it until the adaptation came out in 2012. But the kids loved it. And many teens in fact credited the book with saving their lives. And now has more than 2 million Goodreads ratings and an average of 4.24 stars, which is high. So I think this is one of those where like the adults not getting it is a feature, not a bug. Yeah. And then one of the reasons that probably that star rating stays high is because people like us aren't reading this book just because like they're finding it when you're a teenager, finding it when it's getting a recommend, maybe a librarian, maybe the movie, maybe it's just out there in the culture enough that it can be picked up and recirculated. And I'd be curious too because I mean, what's nuts to think about is we're not that much farther away. I mean, in 1991, we were not that much farther away from Catcher in the Rye than we are from Perks of Being a Wallflower right now. And we will get to Catcher in the Rye at some point. In reading this to be honest with you, Rebecca, I was like, why aren't we doing Catcher in the Rye? But that's a whole other conversation. It's on the calendar, Jeff O'Neill. That we will get to at some point. It's fine. It's totally fine. I think part of what we're trying to do is mix up it and turn. We don't want to go sort of lockstep through literary history. We'd still be doing Augustine or Marcus Ruelis or something at this point. But I do think there's a sense that when you are an adolescent, part of reading something that's at least closest to your time that feels more familiar is it gets a credibility that the interiority being represented is also still credible, right? Yes. Like is this what it was like to be? I needed to feel like it's contemporary to some degree so that it feels like I can believe this story and these characters and their feelings and these emotions, even if Di of Anne Frank could have done the same work for you or something like that, or even if Forever by Judy Bloom or a separate piece could have done the same work for you, there is something about, you know, there's a reason the youth pastor dresses that way, Rebecca, there just is. And that's part of why the more modern cultural references, the more modern kind, the more modern it can feel, I think a teen then can trust it, a certain kind of a yeah. And one of the big functions of young adult literature is to make teens feel seen, to give them a sense of you're not alone, you're not the first or only person to have the experiences that you're having. Here's what it can look like. So good and bad examples of things happen. And then like through this book and through most YA literature is a real thread also of it gets better. You will make it through this period that feels so angsty, it won't always be this way. And even inside these moments that are so difficult, there can be times of real beauty. So I think that's why YA literature, one of the reasons YA literature is so persistently interesting to teens, but also why we get a new classic from for every generation or every micro generation really that reflects back to them like, what was on the radio when you were having formative experiences? And to bring it back to Holden Coughfield, like a teenager's phoniness radar is maybe even over attuned to phoniness. So like, I think that's a thing that you don't want to be put on as a teenager, because I think subconsciously or consciously, we realize as teenagers that there's a lot we don't know. But we also don't want to say that we're just subject to the universe and just tell I'm completely credulous about everything. Because I also know that people lie. Things are going in my house that isn't that aren't talked about. Like, there are subterranean truths here. And I need some recognitions that you know that I know that you know that I know that the world is complicated. And we're not going to bullshit each other about that. Yeah. And why YA lit tends to have this kitchen sink thing happen because teenagers are running into all of the big issues of life at the same time for the first time. Like, it just is that way, you know, trying to figure out sex and drugs and rock and roll and friendships and family and your own personal ethics and how to be a student and what do you care about? Like, it's all so present and so pressing. And I think as an adult, I had this experience when we went back in red forever. And I felt this way with Perks of Being a Wallflower too. It's like, wow, everything is in this book. And adult fiction doesn't really try to do that. But it doesn't have to because we've had more time and more experience. But YA authors really like, they really seize the day to be like, you're seeing some shit. I have seen this before you. Let's talk about it. And Steven Shibosky wasn't that old when he wrote this. He's 29 when the book comes out. So he's in his early to mid 20s. When he starts writing it, he was 21 in 1991, when the book is set. So he's pretty close. Even that's interesting to me. I was thinking about that. Why isn't it said in 1985? Is it the John Hughes-ness of it all? Because he's not writing about his own 15. I was 13 in 1991. So I'm a couple years younger. But it's even, I was looking at interviews and I didn't see an argument made for that. I was very interested in that. It is interesting. And also then why isn't it said in 1998? Like, he's right before the book comes out. Who knows? I've never seen him address that. But it's been, I beloved this book, that those 2 million Goodreads ratings, there is a film adaptation that comes out in 2012. And the book goes back onto the bestseller list for a whole year, crosses the 2 million copies line in 2013. And then, you know, we talked already about some of the really frank discussions of sexuality and drug use. And there's domestic violence. There's like, really everything happens in this book. But it made then frequent appearances on the American Library Association's list of the most banned and challenged books, like year after year in the early 2000s, because of those frank conversations and like contextually 1991 and 1999 matter because this book lands right in the middle of purity culture. And the characters are experiencing that and there are culture wars over sex education. Just a few years before this book comes out, President Clinton's Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was forced to resign because she suggested that masturbation should be taught in sex ed curricula as a form of safer sex and as AIDS prevention. And so like all of that is around these kids in terms of like what their teachers are allowed to say to them, what their parents feel like they should know or don't know. Like, I guess then it's a little more believable that Charlie doesn't know what masturbation is at the start of this book. No one's talking about it in school. I mean, Paul has been out for 30 years. I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure. Yeah. I mean, but also like he has an older brother and he goes to public schools. Right. Like, I mean, I remember the boys making the jackoff motion like from the early like in my earliest consciousness. That's been a joke that teenage boys do. But they're in this real culture. But like, we're not talking yet about all these things with teenagers. They're experiencing them, but the adults are not having conversations with them about it. And Chabosky kind of slides right in and is like, like you can picture the youth pastor flipping his chair around and leaning forward to be like kids. A weird career for Steven Chabosky. I mean, this is the, I think the singular accomplishment of his life. He's gone on to do movies now. And I think the comps to John Hughes and Cameron Crowe are interesting to make. I mean, he has the book among them, right? The, you know, John Hughes has the hits. And then Cameron Crowe is like a little bit later and he has the sort of the music bonafide that the others doesn't. So Chabosky grows up in Pittsburgh. He's born in 1970. So he's eight years old than I am. He's a huge reader. And he got involved early with this guy named Stuart Stern, who was a screenwriter who also wrote Rebel Without a Call. So like James Dean being a teenage rebel, it's like built into his artistic and real DNA at the same kind. And that's an interesting movie to think about from a young adult coming age. Where does that fit in? Somebody takes you under their wing and it turns out he's the screenwriter who created Rebel Without a Call. Like how could you not write it? And so he gets interested in film and screenwriting very early, independent film, but he'd had this character in his mind, you know, a hodgepodge. The characters in this book are sort of taken from pieces of his own life and recombined and put back together in different ways. And then he wrote this line, I guess that's just one of the perks of being a wallflower. And that for him, as you have in the note here, was a way into the character. The reading idea is it was that plus this idea of it being letters at the same time, where it helped him get through this sort of what angle, what voice, how am I going to approach this? But this first person self aware narration. So it's first person narration where in that we are getting, we are meant to believe these are real letters, not just sort of interiority or whatever, let him unlock sort of how he would approach this character where it's confessional and anonymous, and then narrated sort of immediately in the simple past where this happened, then this happened, this happened. And then from there, he's sort of, I don't know, I don't want to say it's been probably when this book comes out, you're like, wow, we're going to get a John Green light career of some kind. But he ends up being a screenwriter and director. Most notably wrote, rewrote the screenplay for Emma Watson's version of Beauty and the Beast, wrote the screenplay for rent. He's published one other novel 2019 that was adult. I didn't read this. I don't remember anything about this. I'm not sure what else to say. It's called Imaginary Friend. He did the adaptation of Wonder, the really great selling RJ Palasso middle grade novel. Also directed the sort of, luckily the Cats musical movie was such a bomb that I think it wiped out the smaller bomb that was dear Evan Hansen around the same time. A very, very strange career, Rebecca. I'm not even sure what to say about Mr. Boski. Interesting. Like this book, it's wild that this is kind of the signal work of Chavosky's career when he doesn't seem to have been setting out to have a career in books at all. Like he graduated from USC's film school. Most of his work has been, as you were saying, in film and like in 2000, he edited an anthology of short stories called Pieces. But aside from that 2019 novel, like no other literary ventures, he's worked exclusively in film. So kind of bananas to just like drop in to books and accidentally produce a generation defining work. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know what else to say about it. They're like a really interesting guy, but a very unusual career and has really just focused his work around film. He did also write and direct the adaptation of this. Right. I did think because I think the green book start John Green, like in 2004, 2006. So between the time this book is published and the movie comes out, we get the John Green phenomenon too, which seems very much of a piece here. Oh, totally. A little bit darker, I think. One of my, well, I'll save it for the hot takes and straight thoughts here in a minute. Let's talk about our own first exposure, Rebecca. You got this right when you were the target demo, I'm guessing. I mean, how else could you be the target demo? Yeah, I was just, I was right in the middle of the target demo. I was a sophomore junior in high school in 99. And like I read this, I think right as it came out, I could not tell you how I first became aware of it. But I remember seeing this neon green cover everywhere. And the book is a weird size. It's like a small little square book. But I just have this real sense memory of seeing that, seeing the MTV Books logo on it. I was reminded doing my research for the show that MTV ran commercials for the book on MTV. Like maybe that's like I was coming home from school and watching TRL. And maybe that's how I saw it. But this was just in the water. Everybody that I knew read it and passed it around. This was my first reread since, but I have remembered that description of, and we'll talk about it later, but this moment of driving Charlie's driving with his friends and a song comes on the radio. Like the weather is perfect and he's feeling so happy and just everything about the vibe is right. And he says, in that moment, we feel infinite. And like, I think about that several times a year and I have for the last 26 years, 27 years, it really stuck with me. I have read this before, but I cannot tell you literally, I have no idea why when I think it was before the movie came out, I would not swear to that. I certainly wasn't reading it in college when it came out. Like, I mean, I was a senior, no, I'm sorry, I graduated in 96. I was a junior and a senior of college when the book came out. I guarantee you I wasn't reading it then. My best guess is I maybe read it when the movie was coming out. Yeah, that was early Book Riot days. That would be a good thing. Yeah, it maybe picked it up because it was very much around the same time. And it was quite short. I don't have much of a memory of my reaction to it other than I liked it. You know, I thought it was interesting and I got through it quickly and all the things we're going to talk about. Yeah, I think there's a pretty narrow age window where this book can hit you as a direct experience rather than something that you're observing. And once you're in college, it's probably too late. It's probably too late because you've already done it, right? I mean, I guess this is a good segue in what I like to read it all about. I think it's important for the structure and perspective and reading experience to think of Charlie. The main character is a freshman, but he gets hooked up with seniors, right? In a scene that I think in reading, it's not really clear. And there's a little bit of hand waving yada yada why these couple of seniors would take their kid, this kid under his wing. But let's just, this happens in days and confused. It happens in almost famous like this is, but you get access to the kids who are a little more advanced. They've seen a little bit more of life. And he himself is quite isolated because he's the youngest because his brother and sister don't talk to him. His best friend in middle school has died. He's a wave. He's a naive person who then becomes our observer and our window into this world. And I think that's often we get mostly in coming of age movies and Anthony Michael Hall and less of a Judd Nelson. Like that's just how these things work. And I think that's interesting to its younger siblings, right? Sometimes middle, never the oldest unless it's a different kind of a book of some kind. But we are then in his perspective, not just from being a teenager, but in the social circle of this particular public high school in Pittsburgh. And he falls in with a, I guess at this point, we're no longer a nerd culture really than the high 80s. This is emo, goth, art kids, grunge. Like that's where this is. And these are the kinds of kids that are thinking about college and they're not caring about football, though they go to the football games. Also a really important sort of liminal moment to there. So they're insiders and outsiders. I think that's important. Like the complete outsider, we get a couple of characters that are like maybe beyond the pale of description in this book, which I always find is interesting. Like the kid he introduced himself to the locker at the end. And he's like, Hey, I'm trying to say, yeah, I know who you are. It's like, Whoa, what's that kid's perspective? Like they're completely outside of the pale there, but they're close. They're not within, but they're close enough where they can move in and out. And that the permeable membrane of the main of high school life, we feel the puncture going back and forth. Both comes as exciting and sometimes very dangerous and sometimes very painful. Yeah, that they're not the cool kids, but they're not the furthest outcast. And so that sets up like a pretty classic coming of age story. Like this is what most YA literature is about figuring out who you are and how to exist in the world with other people. And I think anybody who's ever felt like an outsider, which is all of us at some point, and that's the magic of how these books work, can see themselves in Charlie, you can feel seen by the book. There is just a really powerful, you're not the only one about this book. And Chabosky conveys it without saying it directly, which is I think one of the main reasons that this works. There's not an overt like this is not a Trevor project, it gets better video. Like there is a reason and a use for those and they are like certainly important, but there is something more powerful. We come around to this a lot on this show about showing rather than telling and Chabosky is showing that that you can be a lonely kid who's experienced all the things that Charlie has and still find your way through. And I think the book just like in terms of what it feels like, it really nails what it feels like to be experiencing so much of life for the first time. Like there's excitement and anxiety and wonder and confusion and this like overarching feeling that it's all very important and awareness in the moment that you're having a formative experience or like what the kids today would call the core memories. Like Charlie has awareness at times that he is forming a core memory that this is this thing that's happening to him right now is something he both wants to be inside of as deeply as possible because it's going to be central to his life and understanding of himself. But also he can't help seeing it from a little distance with that awareness of like, this is going to matter to me. Because at this point we have 40 years, maybe a little bit more of youth culture in the bank sort of going back to Bill Haley and rock around the clock post-World War II and he's consumed Greece probably or at least seen or knows about Greece. He knows about the John Hughes movies. He knows about Rebel Without a Cause. It's funny the scene of his own cultural imagining happens around his brother going to college at one point even says, I hope he's having the kind of college experiences like you see in the movies. Like that's his access to it right. So he's very time self-aware but in a way that I don't even understand most of us are aware about how much of our experience of things were on the press of his experiences mediated by seeing representations of it in other forms whether it's parenthood or death or marriage or vacations or whatever else that might be. There's very few experiences that a lot that most of us have that haven't been grist for the art mill at some point and then how to see like it doesn't need that hold up. Is it bull? Can I take any from that? Is it helpful for me? Is it helpful for me to all? Because he doesn't get, he both doesn't doesn't get works of art that help him. He both doesn't doesn't get friends that help him. He both doesn't doesn't get family members that help him. It's sort of picking from these little places sort of scrabble up the climbing wall of making it over the top into being an adult and I think that's the kind of structurally that makes sense because this transitional time I don't know there's a way around it. This is one of my straight thoughts. Is there a way to do 15 better? Can someone perfect the way to do 15? And I think you really can't because as you say you're becoming physically, sexually, intellectually more mature and it's not a binary switch where you go over the top one day versus the other. Maybe that's an older way of thinking about adulthood or something like this, but it's gradual. It's different for everyone. Your own situation makes a huge difference from it and you just there, we talked about this forever, there's just no way of navigating, pre-navigating the awkwardness. There's no real driver's ed for being in relationship to other people romantically, interpersonal or whatever when they themselves also don't know how to drive. There's emotional bumper cars out here, Rebecca Mad Max Fury Road when it comes to being a person in the world in high school. It is. Yeah, there is no cheat code for it. And I think that like that's one of the reasons that reading it, it felt like it generally holds up like because that is just so universal. But Shibosky also I thought really wisely mostly refrains from giving time-anchored references. So like we get a few book titles, but they're older books that Charlie's teacher is giving to him. We get a couple song titles, but for the most part, we don't have a lot of like this is 1991 happening on the page so that you can map on your own teenage moments to it. That is certainly what I did when I read it, eight years later than when the book is set. And it just really generally works. There's some language, some gender dynamic stuff. There's homophobia on the page that's outdated, but like boy, were they accurate in 1999. Like this is a maybe an interesting thing also if you give it to your kids is like, no, this really was like how teenagers talked about dating. This was how gender dynamics worked. This was like what the sexual politics were like in high schools in the mid 90s. And that's really, really different now. Yeah. I also want to give O'Neill's warning about epistolary form. Remember everyone, be careful out there when you're getting letters or diary entries and feeling like you are closer to the character. You are not, you are farther from the character. And this one I think is especially seductive because of this anonymous, I didn't, I even look for like, I don't even think we're supposed to be able to guess or know or have any idea who this person is. Like it's not something given any clues. It's beside the point though. It's fascinating to think about Charlie himself thinking there's a real person, but that real person, he is masking his own. He's like using the letter writing version of one of those things that mask your voice and you sound like Bane or something like that. But even that, because it says he even thinks that a diary can be found. So he's worried about that. So that's part of O'Neill's warnings. Remember even people writing diaries to think about, but there is a writer here and because it's anonymous and because they don't have contact, that's about as close as you can get to feeling like Charlie is giving you the full dope. But even that, Chabosky could have chosen an omniscient narrator, a different kind of first person. That distance is interesting because Charlie is narrating, narrativizing and storytelling and mythologizing his own experience as he goes. Right? That's important to think about here. I think it also serves the function of lightning, the heavy moments a little bit. Because he already happened. Yeah. And there's a two-week period where none of his friends will talk to him because he really bones it at a party. And hasn't been able to tell the girl he's dating that he wants to break up with her. So he takes this moment of truth or dare where his friend dares him to kiss the prettiest girl in the room and instead of kissing his girlfriend, he kisses Sam, the girl he's really in love with. And it just ruins everything. Nobody talks to him for two weeks. And if we're in Charlie's head in a first person omniscient narration of that as it's happening, I think it's just harder to sit with and a lot darker. But because he gives us the like, we're not actually with him in the first two weeks, there's a letter that he writes where it's like, I haven't talked to anybody in two weeks. So he's already started to process it and that makes it a little more just easier to navigate your way into than sitting with the real like immediacy of it or of him, you know, his friends telling him like, just leave and we'll call you when it's cool to interact again and that he doesn't know if they're ever going to call. Like, I was genuinely so stressed out for poor Charlie. It happens pretty quickly. I think that it's a great point. And I think a way sometimes you can A.B. test the universe away. Think about if this was written more like the secret history, because remember those stretch of the secret history, like, are we spoiler? Yeah, are we going to kill Bunny? Is it going to? Are they going to find out what's going to happen? And those on for and it's super stressful. I think that's what Tarte was trying to do. She was trying to make a page turner. She's after something a little bit different here where there's not a lot of narrative tension. You're not reading this for the story to figure out what's going to happen because it feels like it actually happens in high school. It feels kind of random, right? Like this, this happened and then this happened, we went to the dance and there was this night or whatever. And so that after the fact narration from his point of view, it's already happened, feels a little safer, it can move a little bit more quickly. And then Chobosky doesn't have to do weird things about like, what is he going to admit to himself, what he isn't like, he's very much in his own head. I'm going to bring a straight thought up to here because you mentioned that truth or dare. Has anyone's life ever been made better by a teenage truth or dare or spin the bottle? No, we should outlaw both of those. This is advice to all 13 year olds who haven't gotten these situations yet. Realize this is a 0% success rate of working out great for people, right? This is Russian where there's a bullet in every chamber. Do not do this. And I'm not even saying this because it's bad, like it's a moral something. I'm looking out for you. Yeah, and you're not going to be glad. There's never a moment in a book where someone did truth or dare and everyone found out the truth and there was a bunch of healing involved. This is not how it works people. Yeah. Did your place spin the bottle? Yes. Okay, we'll say that for officers. Yeah, that's, uh, mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, let's see, back to the book. Very clipped, nondescriptive language, right? He's not trying to be a fancy smart guy writer and it's very, it's very focused on the events of his life. There's some rare diversions or random thoughts, but unlike say, I keep going back to catch the right and that's because of all the reasons we just, we talked about, there's less to sort of thinking about the world. If he is thinking about the world through the prism of his friends or sort of the immediate moment here. It's like, it's so immediate and descriptive rather than analytical or diagnostic, which I really appreciate it, especially in Charlie talking about his experience of mental health problems, like just the way, the fact that he talks about them normalizes it and Chebosky must have been intentional about trying to de-stigmatize these things, but it never, like therapy language is not a thing yet in the culture and the book never approaches anything like that. That Charlie talks about what it feels like to be in his head. He talks about the feeling that he can't stop thinking or that he's going to the dark place, but we get to know what that experience is like rather than his intellectualized version of it. And I think that made it very relatable as a teenager too, because like who among us has not had at least a moment of feeling like, oh my god, if I could just unplug my brain. Chebosky was very intentional in this, I did read an interview about writing a gay character who certainly struggled and that was a part of their story, but also super, the funniest, most confident person in the book. I think Patrick and otherwise a super round character. So that was very much at play. And it got me thinking about, I think the signal coming of age, popular artistic work is my so-called life from this era. This is a one season 1994 and there's a character in that is it's a very similar dynamic along the way. Oh yeah, that's right. Rikki. Rikki. I think I haven't seen it in a million years. It was only one season, whatever, but I kept thinking about my so-called life over also an MTV property. Yes. Fascinating to think about. I watched it a couple years ago because it is just like a handful of episodes and it still really hits. It does. It's so fascinating. A famous kind of like it was the freaks and geeks of the early 90s and the freaks and geeks was the freaks and geeks of I guess the late 90s. And it was like it was so frank about everything. Like my parents let me read whatever I wanted, but I was not supposed to watch my so-called life. I was, I think a little younger than the characters and I remember like sneaking it when they weren't around or like watching at a friend's house and being like, oh my god, they just get me. Yeah. Jordan Catalano, important for a lot of people there. Yeah. Let's move into strange thoughts. I think this is probably our longest stray thoughts collection here because we know of what we speak when it comes to this this era. Just yeah, really so many. But I really wondered seeing the kitchen sink of it all if in these like pre-2000s whether young adult authors really felt like they had to like shoot their one shot and throw everything into a single book in case they didn't get another crack because it really is astonishing how many of the big issues are present here and its similarity to how packed forever is made me wonder like, is that what was going on before we had a really robust young adult literature? That's interesting. What else you got? The Mr. Keating effect is so real. Like Charlie's teacher, is his name Henry? Bill? Bill. Bill is like, he's in Teach for America, so he's basically fresh out of college. And he's 24, maybe? Yeah, 24, 25. And he's giving Charlie extra books to read because he sees something in him. Like they're just a couple not just shy of Oh, Captain, my captain. But I spent a lot of time thinking about how it's so common in these stories for it to be the English teacher. It's not just that it's a teacher who sees something in you and takes you under their wing. And probably some of this has to do with like writers had this experience with English teachers. But this like, so magical English teacher effect that is really brought to life in dead poet societies really, really present here that Charlie starts to understand some things about himself and the world through these books. And he feels then that this teacher gets him to and just that idea that somebody gets you. And that this these feelings of not being gotten can lead to your own artistic work. A great story like Monsters Inc stays with you forever. And Disney Plus is where you'll find your next great story from the return of the award winning hit series, Rivals. Welcome to the naughtiest show on television to the unmissable crime drama, Potential. A lifetime of great stories awaits this spring on Disney Plus 18 plus subscription required T's and C's apply is I think really powerful. Let's see. I will this was one of mine. I'm sorry. I'll dovetail on your is Charlie smart. So we're told at the end Bill says, I don't know Charlie. I don't know how smart you are. You are so not only of my students but and again, these are capably written letters. But did you did you read this thinking we've got we've got a real one on our hands with Charlie? He's so innocent that it's really hard to tell. Yeah. I didn't buy I buy a teacher taking interest a kid who likes to read News 11. But that note of like not only did I think you would like this and it was interesting for you, but you were like sort of single. That was a bridge too far. Yeah, you're fine. If it's just like I saw you like this. I started getting something out of it. I'm so glad. I wish you the best. I think you've got a lot of that's enough. That's all we have to do. Yeah, let's be careful. Like a second part of that conversation that's important though because Bill does say to him and I'm saying this to you because I'm not sure that anyone else ever has. And you know why because he's not smart. No one else has ever said it because he's not that smart, Rebecca. He's fine. I think that maybe he is laying it on a little thick because Charlie needs Charlie needs to be hyped up. He needs to be glazed. I think that the part that was in it for me is that he gets an alternative idea of a life. Bill has this girlfriend. They're artistic. They're living together. There's something on the other side of what he's seen. And because I think that's something that doesn't get represented very well. Like we got a lot of my so-called life in the real world and stuff, but we didn't get your 26 and things are going okay. Right. And you're not just the man in the gray flannel suit or you're not taking mother's little help first or you're not like how do you help someone imagine the possibility without that because this is something I've talked about with my own kids is like I didn't really know what was possible out there to be an adult. I didn't know that being a professor was possible. Turns out it wasn't for some of us, but like that was a thing that you could pursue or like this kind like you know you see what you see and you're innocent. You don't know what you don't know. I think that's maybe the critical thing that teenagers don't get. They're more expert and they're domain than I am about high school at this point. But what they don't know is what they don't know and how short this actually is. Right. And what can come next. And there's ways of being happy and being different in the world that you haven't seen represented on screen. A. because you don't care about adult fiction or whatever at this point. And B. it's unwritten because the future is yet to unfold. And so I think that that's the part I really like. Because he got to see and I'll say this. This is maybe too much TMI. I found out this is something my students really like to see about me when I was a college teacher. Like they were super interested in my life and my relationship with Michelle and why I started having kid. And I wasn't like you know I was just I'm not saying I was like life goals or anything like that. But that that was a possible outcome was super interesting to them because they just never seen it before. Yeah. It's like when your therapist tells you something about themselves. Yes. Right. Like oh a window into the life of this person that has a role of authority in my life and they seem like they've got it together. I love that note. And I really loved how well Chibosky captures. And I think it's just a byproduct of the time. But how well he captures how unsurveilled and unsupervised we were then like Charlie leaves school at like three p.m. And for several days doesn't go home until late in the evening because he's trying to avoid his girlfriend calling on the phone. And nobody knows where he is in that time and no one is worried because everybody's just out and about like there's no find my friends. There's no what is it life 360 like whatever the other apps are that parents use to know where their kids are or that kids are using to know where each other are like they're just out there. And like that level of unsupervisedness allowed teenagers space to explore themselves and to explore the things they were going to run into in adult life. And like some of those things are dangerous or can be you know like sex and drugs and drinking can all be dangerous. But they're also all things that we all have to learn to navigate. And they learn them in this peer group with other people who are bumping like emotional bumper cars as you were saying. They're all making these mistakes and conducting these experiments at the same time. And I really felt some longing and some nostalgia for that. Yeah that's really interesting. I love this idea of how many infinite tattoos are out there. There have to be a ton of people with tattoos that say infinite. From this like there are a billion playlists on Spotify with I feel infinite we feel infinite in that moment I felt infinite like I went and looked and I scrolled until I got bored and then there were still more. So let's have it let's have it out Joe Ward you you're sort of proposing this for moments of emotional candor that clears the air and allows the candidate. Were you thinking when what moment is that for you? I think it's the moment well we needed a let's have it out Joe moment instead of the moment where Charlie kisses Sam. But there is a good moment with him and Sam later where she's like this is like you got to handle stuff you got to show up in your life you can't just keep prioritizing everybody else. And since we identified this when we talked about little women earlier this year I've been seeing it in other books like these moments where characters just sort of are fed up with each other and are like fuck it we have to say it let's just say the thing let's do it let's so like that's my let's have it out Joe Ward here goes I guess to Sam for telling Charlie how it really is. I think that's I think that's good I think that's it's fascinating because it also could have been that moment where he does kiss Sam rather than what's her name again bad move you don't like the stage putting people on front street like that's a real tough thing to do to someone but he is trying to be honest like because he feels that the damn must be broken in some way let's do that in private that's the cowards way out yeah yeah or is it's dumb and reckless cowardly I'm not sure about this my note here is did John Great take Chabosky's career to get more corrected by John Green I don't think Chabosky had a second YA novel in him I didn't see anything related to that he was a movie person this was his entree to be like a screenwriter a staff writer like this was his book that got him into the next level I wonder I guess related to this like if perks of being a wallflower got cited in the comp titles when John Green's agent was shopping his debut has to have been is there a right is there a like look we have a demonstrated market for these kinds of stories especially about young teenage boys and let's let's get in there one of the most cited phrases is we accept the love we deserve we think we deserve that means what exactly to me Rebecca I this garbage okay I have this in notable quotes because I genuinely thought this was an Oprah Dr. Phil thing like I'm pretty sure that's where I first encountered this idea but it's the it's kind of a like unintentionally victim-blamey situation of like you're in a you're in a shitty relationship and it you're tolerating being treated badly because low self-esteem is like is the theory like you're letting people treat you badly because you don't think you deserve any better and I think there's a nugget of unconscious truth to that but it is not the whole story in bad relationships or it's certainly it's not the story in abusive ones but it's it's one of those things that also sounds like dorm room wisdom yeah I I was like I'm rejecting that I mean there's maybe something there but it feels so tried and self-involved that I like really really thought it was Oprah I was conflicted about the letters to this the anonymous person I think it's interesting from a structural point of view that's the writer let's Chabosky himself do interesting things but also like would anyone in a million years do this I just I just he's so long does not pass the smell test to me um yeah I really it had been so long since I read it that about halfway through I paused and had a moment of like is he actually writing these to someone or is this all just a construction and like two pages after I wondered that Charlie talked about getting a stamp and walking the letter down to the mailbox I was like oh I guess he's actually doing it yeah I think you could have the same book just without the dear whatever and love Charlie and get rid of you can have the same book and it's all narrated in the same person and the same simple past and readers are we don't ask that we know where these sort of consciousnesses are coming from we understand books that's my note we understand how books work it's not the best but it's also not the worst because the worst word it's not goes to it ends with us and the diary written as letters to Ellen DeGeneres that that is a true disaster unforgivable never to think about my next is what do we think of his mixtape depressing the mixtape is depressing this is not how you I mean I don't know this might have worked on somebody in 1991 but opening with the smiths and then going to Simon and Garfunkel and then a whiter shade of pale then some Nick Drake moody blues smashing pumpkins blackbird by the Beatles and landslide by Fleetwood Mac like this is an existential crisis yeah this is a real drip I made mixtapes around this time and I've got some notes on the mixtape a couple of these are one the 70s nostalgia in the 90s was real but this is it was yeah there would absolutely been lead zeppelin on this I think the thing it's absolutely missing I think there's something Chebosky's not calibrated correctly because he's too old is there would have been hip hop on this there absolutely would have been hip hop on this in some way by 1991 it could have been sugar hill gang it could have been beastie boys it could have been whatever but there would have been hip hop of some kind on this well this is just not a let me make you fall in love with me kind of mixtape it's just not fun it's not there's a sleep by the Smiths on there twice yeah yeah black eyeliner this is a black eyeliner mixtape this goes into my window the high school experience become a thing again I've got the earliest nostalgia core one was American graffiti which actually is great I love this movie I think it holds up terrifically some combination of car culture popular magic in and high school is a prelude to college like that becoming more of a pipeline of the GI bill and I think we're still living in car culture meaning freedom and a defined teen culture I think that's a lot happening on phones but happens other where popular music and then high school as a prelude to other things and again look at our reading lists even in this the pre-lapse serian one is sort of go tell it on the mountain and little women and think of the coming of age of little it's all over the place and there is no public high school like it is a mess like I'm now going to be a governess I'm getting married I'm not going like you were just out there you're just out there man there wasn't this even interstitial period where you have a chance to figure it out yeah and their social lives are so constrained and directed and defined that this is like this is pretty new and then it turned out to be a pretty actually temporary experience of adolescence that's not how teenagers are experiencing it for the most part today this sort of really unsurveilled freedom like yeah you know I mean I had this at the time that I read this book my parents both worked I got home from school like three or four there were a couple of hours where nobody was in my house you could go to a friend's house that their parents might not be home for another several hours like we threw the parties they did not look like the parties and can't hardly wait but like we threw the parties we did the things they're like you would leave the house and your parents would not know for sure what you were doing yep I do like that Charlie has moments of getting out of his own head and imagining the lives and futures and in their working of others that's a little unusual for a kid and if I'm going to give him some props for maybe being manic pixie dream boy or whatever Bill thinks he is at the end that's fair like so I'll just read a little bit this I think this is a quote I think about all this sometimes when I'm watching a football game with Patrick and Sam I look at the field and I think about the boy who just made the touchdown I think that these are the glory days for that boy and this moment will just be another story someday because all the people who make touchdowns and home runs will be somebody's dad and when his children look back at his yearbook photograph they will think that their dad was rugged and handsome and looked a lot happier than they are I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs and I hope they believe me I think that was my favorite bit of the whole book yeah there's a bit I think right after that where he says maybe these are my glory days and I just don't know it because they don't involve a ball the ball like that and and really nails it he also has a moment like that where when he's starting to feel depressed he's like watching all of his friends experiencing something together and he feels on the outside of it but he recognizes that if he weren't depressed it's the kind of moment that would feel good it would feel like unity and it's just this mental health moment that is skewing his perception of what's happening there my last straight thought and this is really existential and personally meaningful is is there a way to do adolescence that doesn't make people identify with books like this I don't know I just think adolescence is hard and weird and it's like the best version of a root canal like is there you know like uh-huh not gonna be you're still pulling the nerve out of your head but maybe he doesn't have to be as bad I think it's the loneliness I think about you know is there a way to make and maybe that's what art is and therapy speak and counselor and you know trying to be aware and present is like it can feel very lonely and it is lonely because you're only going through it in your own particular way and Charlie at his best moment sees himself as part of a process right it's seeing a sort of like a larger ecosystem of life and this is just a stage in it but that just is doing a lot of stage a lot of work in that sense when you're 15 and a half right it doesn't feel that way and I don't know it's possible not to feel that way yeah it feels like you're gonna feel that way forever and he does get those little glimpses that there is another side to it as Sam and Patrick graduate as his brother comes home from college and tells him what it's like as his sister gets ready to go to college he can start he's starting to see the possibilities and that maybe he's not gonna feel this way forever and then my my sub one was this a good experience apart from the traumatic stuff like his you know Aunt Helen and then you know his friend in middle school killing themselves apart from the actual bad stuff is this good is this a good experience and that's a question I have about my own high school experience and maybe we'll get into that a little bit more in the office hours at the same time that's a real question um notable quotes lead us off yeah well Goodreads favorite is that one about we accept the love we think we deserve so stay real Goodreads yeah I reject that we're gonna we're gonna pop that one off that's our first pancake here yeah I swear we're infinite I know you like this I like it too ish this is just I don't even know if I like this so much as when I read this in 1999 yeah and I was you know driving my first car with my friends on Friday nights with the windows down and like semi-charm life blasting some third-eyed blind I felt you existential yeah and in fact like a year ago that came on when Bob and I were driving home from dinner one night on like a warm spring night the windows were down and the sunroof was open and they're like da da da da da da started playing and I was like oh my god and we just we just drove and sang and I was like this is as the music went down I was like that was a perks of being a wallflower moment like that in that moment I swear we were infinite it's not how I would have labeled it as a teenager but I knew exactly what he meant when I read that when I was 17 I mean what does he mean it's I think it just feels like you're connected to something bigger it's transcendent free and connected at the same time yeah I don't know that there's there's a paradoxical feeling of that I was Rowan it's just it's just that transcendence yeah go ahead yeah Rowan and I were driving around sunny day beautiful like bluebird weather 70 degrees sunny we're driving around we like to listen to music all the time but especially Rowan and I when we're just the two of us driving we're all the windows down and we play music loud and we you know take that's what's different now is you can take requests I plug in Spotify and we have the entire catalog of human musical output in there and I was we were talking about our favorite sunny day songs like you know there's a couple songs that if I play them on a day like this I'm like wild stallions being transported back in time uh-huh and I don't feel I feel I know that time has changed but something unlocks is unleashed I get connected to driving my 1982 gold Honda Civic around you know in the summertime in Kansas with the windows down on the way to play basketball or softball or whatever I was doing and you do feel like you're part of something bigger and it's you get sort of Whitman time avails not space avails not like all of a sudden for a moment it's just one of those magical things that music can do yeah music can smell yeah music and smell that music can really do it and that you can once you make that memory you can go back and unlock it you know like like you're saying we can be here 30 years later driving around and still having those moments I love how central music is to these friends lives like there's a one of my favorite lines is Sam saying Patrick used to be popular or Charlie says Patrick used to be popular before Sam bought him some good music like that's that's real you hear you start to hear something a little more complicated and a little more interesting and you get a little more interesting and they just they spend all this unstructured time together like just hanging out and I do think that like kids today have lost access to just the art of the hang the teenagers in my life talk about like the difficulty of just hanging out with friends and everybody not just being in their phones oh my god yes you know like I spent so much time just like sitting on couches in people's basements and and they're doing the same thing in the book and Charlie says I don't know what it was and I know we really didn't accomplish anything but it felt great to sit there and talk about our place in things and you're just you're like starting to unlock really what connection can be really what those conversations about the big things in life and the most sensitive things about your own experience can be like with people who were there with you and want to listen to you and it's I mean I thought Chebosky just really captured that beautifully um I'll go down to a couple let's see I finished to kill a mockingbird it is now my favorite book of all time but then again I always think that until I read another book so that's that's real especially when you're a bookish teenager where you may have literally 36 books you've read on your own that you haven't read for class right and it's fun to have teenagers in my house and really they just have kids because any movie or book they read literally could now be their favorite book of all time just because the day there's not that much data you know there's a 3% chance that one of the 33 movies you've seen is your favorite movie of all time and even then when you see later him recommend his books for his friends they're just every book he's read because he got handed down to them like they just don't have data here they just they're still acquiring data to make sense of themselves in their world and the date they over index on the data they do have because that's all the data they have um whether it's to kill a mockingbird oh a straight thought from before naked lunch is some crazy work for Bill to recommend go google yourself naked lunch I forgot about that isn't that the one that Bill recommends when like he's having an off day because he and his girlfriend were fighting I tried to read I've read naked lunch and I did it sort of as I was making my way through lists of books and I know this is a thing and that's that was I consider myself an intelligent person not as smart as Charlie obviously not Charlie but I was like what in the living hell is going against that um buh buh buh buh buh buh this is Patrick and I'm not sure I know what to make of this so I presented to you Rebecca do you ever think Charlie that our group is the same as any other group like the football team and that the only real difference between us is what we wear and why we wear it yeah and then there was a pause well I think it's all bullshit and I'm not sure what he means by that like what's bullshit that there is a difference or there isn't a difference does he think the difference does he think the idea that they're different is bullshit or the idea that they're not differences is bull I think Patrick would say that my reading of it is that he thinks the idea that they are different is bullshit like because Patrick's in love with a football player who is closeted and he is Patrick like very clearly sort of exists outside of the social group boundaries like he's in the theater kid gang who's performing the rocky horror picture show but also he's an avid football fan he goes to the to the games and he sort of has found his people that he feels comfortable with but I think he's one of those kids who sees like the social demarcations and the popular kids and he knows that that's all a facade like he knows that the popular kids are not actually happier than anybody else I guess maybe I have more modern language for I think it's constructed but real that difference and that was my own experience of yeah that's and maybe feels real that I also like this little observation that feels a little bit more grown up he was at Bill's house visiting them and he says well then after a few minutes it was time to leave I don't know who decides these things it just happens and that's why like suddenly that's because they don't live in the Midwest so nobody slapped their thighs and well well well all right anything else you want to do for I think I hit all my notable quotes for you Rebecca I think if you're talking from 2026 yes if you're looking for a time capsule or like a polaroid of what it felt like to be a teenager especially in the last days before the internet this book will get you there yeah maybe not trigger warnings there's sexual assault there's there's a bunch of trigger warnings honestly in here this is not what's the highest art coming of age story oh do we know the answer to this question this just this question just occurred to me I'm not prepped in so I apologize I am unprepared to answer this send us your emails zero to well read at book riot dot com yeah tough Romeo and Juliet I don't know I don't know what we're doing it doesn't need to be high art but like no you're coming yeah if you're coming from an adult perspective and you want like a high art experience it's just this is not a book that you're in for the writing this is a coming of age story like it's why a because like as we know and I've been told a million times because I've got an unpopular take about the house on Surulian sea on the book riot pod which is fine I don't I don't care I stand by it we can have different ideas that a young adult capital Y capital a is a teen protagonist written from their point of view they're the main character largely dealing with teen issues but we can write about teenagers doing things from an adult point of view or you know that's larger and other kinds of ways of thinking about these things it's not written for a 15 year old to see themselves yeah it's written for some other version so maybe that's a good she doesn't email zero to well read at book riot dot com immortal questions are asked which of these are primary here here's our contenders what is the good life what do I mind neighbor how do I know what I know is this all there is how to deal with the certainty of death what else might there be what's the deal with good and evil free will real or no I mean largely what is the good life Charlie navigating what he wants from his life how to make friends it woven through that is some what do I owe my neighbor how do you exist in community there's also some how to deal with the certainty of death because his aunt Helen has died that was traumatic for him right and there's a little what's the deal with maybe not what's the deal with good and evil but what's the deal with people who do bad things because his aunt Helen we found out at the very end sexually molested him when he was a kid and it's it's pretty subtle like this was one of my stray thoughts is would you get away with that subtle of a reveal of something like that today and I'm a question I'm of two minds about how subtle it is but yeah I'm not sure that's a really good question Rebecca I don't I don't know that you would I think that's where it maybe verges into adult fiction yeah you have to be able to like something else yeah you have to be able to pick up the thread that that's what he's talking about but he's realized he has real empathy for her and some real like understanding that she was the way she was because she was abused by men in her life and that what she did was bad and she was responsible for it but that she was not necessarily a bad person so he's sort of tangling with with all of those things it's not we're not ringing all of the big life question bells here but you get a good handful of them I think one question that maybe it's actually a lot it has to do a lot more art than it's not here and because of who I am it will not ascend to the pantheon the question but like what to do with boners is also a question fellow and lady and all all kinds of a soul boner or you know whatever you want to but like that's a stand in for sexuality romance like love the whole thing yeah yeah you're ready for that that's really interesting if we map that immortal question back on to all the other books it's a lot more than you would think it's a sub it's a sub question of what is the good life I guess what's hamlet doing with boners jeff are we sure that this book is not about art and writing at 100% absolutely yeah well writing I mean we didn't really talk about what is charlie getting out of he getting something out of like it's therapeutic right like we know javelin and diaries are therapeutic and he feels it he even says that I think over the course of the book right like I feel I feel better because I do this yeah it helps in process like it's about what writing does for the writer but then he's also on the receiving end of writing with all of these books that change his life so since I'm in the middle of my first time through the sopranos I'm seeing everything this is a prano's lens the therapy frame of that would have been in the water in 1999 totally this idea of like talking to this even this anonymous third person is a useful narrative construction and like also in the water at this time is a lot of angst about the psychology of teenage girls reviving ophelia is out right now that's right eating disorders are having a big cultural moment in the mid to late 90s opera is talking about all of this stuff so it's interesting and I think special in this moment in y a that chavosky's writing about a boy who's experiencing these things because we were like the moms were all talking about where the girl's gonna be mentally healthy and safe in the late 90s but I don't think we were having that conversation about boys yeah um let's see oh could you get the most of the justice watching the signal adaptation Rebecca I just watched it for the first time I think technically yes but like the real magic is in Charlie's voice and the letters and I think you can only get the full impact of it from reading the book I am going to say this is one of the rare ones where I think the movie can stand in pretty damn well I think the thing my memory that jumped out I did not rewatch this I know Ezra Miller is now a super fraught person to say oh I don't know anything about him I'll google that later but he is on I think he steals the movie he was he was so compelling and I did think that watching it like especially the moments where he's performing as franken furter uh in the rocky horror picture show like being sort of life of the party really brings to life the Patrick character in a way that Patrick in the movie is better than Patrick in the book for sure movie musical tv series are muppets okay I have a policy that I want to put forward about this right now and I don't want any new adaptations of perks of being a wallflower unless everybody promises not to fill it with therapy speak like this works they didn't have the tools then they don't get the tools now and an adaptation of it yeah but I would take it as a jukebox musical that's like if you wanted to gear it to my generation you could do original recipe millennial with like dashboard confessional third eye blind Fiona apple a lannis morissette I'm in charge here so also counting crows but you could do one for like every do the gen z version do the gen alpha version with their music and just port the story around I think that would work yeah there wasn't one grunge I mean I know 91 was that was both 10 no 10 was 92 but nirvana's talked about in the book and it didn't make the mixtape that's my biggest beef and I will not accept that that's my problem uh for this particular I do not need another adaptation I think the one that where there is is quite good good quite good uh trivia adaptations rumors mr. trade of quotes and more Rebecca I'll guess I'll start Emma Watson is the reason this film got made this was her first movie after Harry Potter Shabosky said this in an interview she loved it she wanted to play this and then the funding and everything else came around it he got to write and then not just write the screenplay but direct the day thing because Emma Watts like she had that much pull at this particular moment hard to remember how big of a deal it was she's still a huge star though I think she's more famous for being Emma Watson now than for being an actress which again nice work if you can get it but Emma Watson wanting to play Sam and do that part is the reason this movie yeah yeah as I said there's tons of playlists on Spotify with I feel infinite or some variation I got curious about other titles from MTV books when I was looking for trivia about this book there are some real gems none of them have done well I can't believe these are real I know there's a series called Bard Academy and the entries all have so plays on literary names like Wuthering High the Scarlet Letterman and my favorite Moby Click you can't you know what my hot take is MTV books desired deserve to go out of business yeah there's also one called oh my goth by Gina Showalter that was allegedly so bad that the author yanked it from publication and rewrote it and MTV books yeah MTV books did not stick around for long after this book comes out but they relaunched in 2023 Whale Fall by Daniel Krause big book I know you were a fan like was on the New York Times that is a weird it's gonna be a move this is a weird yeah that is such a weird thing for them to do yeah Daniel Krause like is the highest profile author that MTV books has had since the relaunch but the relaunch also does not seem to be going great like the MTV books Instagram account has not posted since December of 2025 and I couldn't find any like updates about other new books coming so I I think that MTV books is maybe just you know not meant to be tough tough tough hot takes would you like to begin or would you like to begin I mean we talked about it already that there's really like I just did not buy it that a 15 year old boy who had a big brother and attended public schools in 1991 didn't know what masturbation was I did I did not believe it that he didn't know that the word there was a word for it no I think he doesn't know what it is and like he's he like discovers it and then is right we had sex ed in middle school in Kansas yeah that might be one where maybe chavoski being just eight years older I wonder that I bumped up against that too it's like yeah I just I didn't believe it at all there's this moment where Sam kisses charlie because she wants his first kiss to come from someone who loves him very tough stuff and I think like maybe my hot or take I think that's really selfish like in the book it comes off as kind of sweet in the movie you're like oh this is so mean to him like she thinks that she's doing him a favor but he gets to kiss the person that he's been fantasizing about and knows that it's not real just this is not the heroic feat that Sam and the Chebacca presented to me I don't remember do they do this scene in the movie where they're like they're performing in um rocky horror where they're like rubbing against that they do that in the movie yeah also very that's that very much goes into what do I do with this boner question that's a very tough tough spot for charlie those points yeah and I also think if you're over 21 you're probably too old to read this yeah I my related one this is both the best argument for and the worst argument against stories about 15 year olds that are for 15 year olds like yeah it is but it's also by its nature limited in important ways but I don't have a better way I mean I don't present to know better a different way but like I could feel myself bumping up against the and then what but yes you're almost there you're almost getting it but like you're also 15 and that's okay and then blah blah blah all teen rebel stories of drinking and angst and whatever they have now have blurred into me into a slurry of yes and it's real and I get it but it's not for me every generation needs one to reflect a particularities but that is all surface clutter I get it I think okay I've got a handle on the coming of age story there are different ones and they're different like we're going to do some recs and read-alongs I'm going to go off book a little bit I think it's more interesting to see different cultures but I think I'm good on white straight kids who like art in public high schools I think I'm covered yeah I think we've trod that ground yes I think I'm covered yeah all right let's do read-alikes then yeah my first one is not a novel at all it's a memoir stay true by wasu I like this came out a couple of years ago and I remember when I read it it's a memoir about a friendship that he forms in his freshman year of college so he's a little older than these characters but Sue goes off to college doesn't really know anybody he is a kind of a charlie character he's a quiet artsy kid he's been through some stuff and he befriends this frat guy and they form a really deep friendship that is like surprising to both of them about who the other person is under the surface and this is a memoir about this life-changing early adulthood friendship there is a scene where they are driving around in a car listening to music and I remember when I read the book being like oh they're having a perks of being a wallflower moment just an amazing beautiful memoir we talk on the br pod about like never pass up a memoir by a new yorker writer yeah and stay true is one of the best and was nominated for a bunch of awards the year that it came out I think also spiritually Kurt Vonnegut's collected commencement speeches with advice to young people is a fun place to go that collection is called if this isn't nice what is and it comes from Vonnegut exhorting people like to paraphrase it I like I urge you when you are having a moment that is wonderful to pause and notice that you're in that moment what is yeah and charlie is discovering the magic of that of being in the like present and in the middle of something wonderful catcher in the rye an obvious read-alike and an inspiration what's your what's your sense memory of catching the right right now rebecca schensky are you like I remember liking catcher in the rye if we were to read it tomorrow we're like because people may not know but it's now seen as what like dated and it's like I think I read the red flag on your dating profile like I'm not sure where we I think we need a redemption tour for catcher in the rye and we'll we will give it one when we do it here on zero to well read because it's this is a book about what it is to feel like to be a teenager and it captures that well I remember loving all the stuff about phoniness and like really liking holden coffield's voice I got to read it as a teenager before there was this sort of cultural aura of like you know before we had come all the way around on it I do think if you're like a 35 year old man and catcher in the rye is still the book you relate the most to like I think that's a wonderful point I think that's fair that's been entered in accepted into the record right that's the red flag but if you're 15 and reading holden coffield being disillusioned with the especially the adults around him and all the kids who are kind of fake posers like that's a persistent and prevalent feeling I think catcher in the rye works yeah maybe I'll read I haven't read it in 20 years so I could be wrong in my current lens but my memory of my own reading experience when I was in my 20s I think maybe maybe in late teens was it's pretty interesting oh you didn't have to read it in school I don't think so again I'm I'm fishing here for those particular things that are foundational um I had the larger John Green corpus you have specifically looking for Alaska here it looks like yeah which I've not read but the internet recommends I have no did you read looking um Fault in our stars yes did you read that yes I did so the knock on the green averse and a lot of YA frankly that has like really hyper literate super smart adult written dialogue in teenagers mouths that's the converse of Charlie isn't smart it's like oh those kids are too smart I don't know what I want maybe it's unfair to put it that way it's a real Goldilocks situation yeah I've got a couple recommendations that aren't for exactly like this thing but this movie came out seven eight years ago edge of 17 starring Henry Stanfield yes and Woody Harrelson is her history teacher I think I don't think it's English teacher and I just thought it was delightful and it hits a lot of the same points and it feels more modern it's a little bit it doesn't take itself quite so serious though it's still serious and I think Harrelson's in great and I think that teacher is reflecting on all these teacher moments he's much more gruff he ultimately comes through for her when she needs someone but he's much more like Jesus come on can you pull you know it's it's there's nothing really special about her except she keeps coming and ultimately he will show up for her but it's not because she is uniquely interesting and beautiful and wonderful and need saving it's like she shows up she's as worth it as anybody else for him to like pick her up one night and make sure she's okay I'm going off book here a little bit okay I think I think if you're coming of age let's expand our minds there's lots of different ages to come up in an environment yes we did go tell on the mountain by James Baldwin we did little women I would suggest this was a huge hit that no one talks anymore about man child on the promised land by Claude Brown I don't know this book four million copies it's about growing up in the inner city as a black man and it was raw and the realities of growing up in the 40s and 50s the bell jar Sylvia Plath she's 19 but she's moving the city and trying to make her way in the world um you know uh the other one I was going to say here Dante and Aristotle discover the secrets of the universe yeah that's a great man sayings two young Latino guys in the 80s and El Paso who are growing up figuring out their own sexuality their relationship to each other some great parents in those books if I recall correctly again there's a lot of different they're they're hitting separate beats but I guess what I'm finding is let's do like you know how they do like a do a Shakespearean remake in like the world of high finance let's move these perspectives around if you're trying to get more perspective on it now especially if you're in one of these identity or one of these eras or any one of these geographical locations it may speak more directly but if you like coming of age stories just to like them spread around a little bit see what else is out there take a walk with your yeah go watch the new Netflix adaptation of forever by Judy Blooms that's set in like contemporary LA about black teenagers dealing with revenge porn and like all all the ways that technology that they are surveilled and supervised sort of a contrast to this story cocktail cocktail party crib sheets Rebecca I don't think people are bringing this up in a cocktail party that don't exist but if they were Rebecca I mean the specifics of teen angst are different for all of us but the themes of it are universal is the big takeaway and also that few things in life are as magical as being with friends on a warm night with the windows down and your favorite song turned all the way up I think that's pretty good I think that's also when you haven't read any books reading a book is great yeah it is it is it's amazing final beat our zero to well read score each one gets a score from one to ten with ten being the highest our five vectors of evaluation are historical importance readability current relevance of central questions book nerd read cred and oh damn factor historical importance Rebecca is low it is I think it's like it's not a zero of course but a three like yeah it got a movie people read it two million goodreads is not nothing but does it stand out is it first amongst the YA or the coming of age classics stay tuned I guess I would say no but it's more important in its time than it is yes I think yeah readability is quite high I would yeah I would say a nine or a ten it's really easy to take down current relevance of central questions we have I I suppose made the arguments this is a nine or a ten yeah I think it is it's quite high quite high I think on the other hand the book nerd read is quite low yeah because it's like it's historical position is a question mark at this point I think we're probably we're like at a two here three maybe yeah any book at all is a one right you know you get some credit right oh damn factor this was tricky for me because I may have underplayed how natural chabosky makes this feel right I got a little hung up in our discussion here about the structure and narrative form and some of those meta things but there's not outside of you know a couple of moments that feel like a little too too I want to give credit to naturalness yeah and I think it gets a little more credit I mean I can't go over above a six but I'll go above a five and when the book was fresh the oh damn factor was high like it really hit the audience that it was intended to hit so I think in the in 1999 this would have been like an eight but now I'll give it a six six something like that okay cool you can visit patreon.com slash zero to well read for detailed show notes free newsletter and membership options you can follow us on socials at zero to well read podcast and email us zero to well read at book read.com this is a klaxon for y'all you high school middle school teachers English teachers out there you know what coming of age stories do kids relate to which ones maybe we don't know how does this one evaluate please be our emissary into the hormone field needs maybe just a little bit more deodorant ranks of the hallways of middle school and high school. Never have I been so glad not to have children. I think one thing that's gone away is showering after gym class I think that was that was oh they don't make them do that anymore I just don't think you do that anymore it's is my understanding thanks to thrift books for sponsoring this season of zero to well read and zero to well read is a proud member of the airwave podcast network Rebecca I hope you can find a cd of counting crows or a 90 spotify playlist to blast on a warm summer evening sometimes.