Andy Greenwald

CONTENT WARNING: Adult who has no boundaries around a teenager, and my opinions on what that is called and what should happen.

One star. Would you look at that! The Goodreads reviews indicate I'm in good company with my one-star review! What joy!
I had hoped I could summarize this review and even provide a TL;DR. As I kept reading, I realized I was going to rip this book to shreds and it was gonna be a long one.

The book starts out with David, the protagonist, experiencing possible depression written to seem like lethargy and later laziness. This is sprinkled throughout but is simultaneously more of the book than it should have been. Dude, your girlfriend clearly broke up with you early on in the novel. Stop acting like you're still together when she left the country and used phrases that indicate breakups! Oh, you did when Cath showed up and you drooled over her, then you went back to pining for Amy at odd moments. Eighty percent of the book was: party party drugs New York New York Blah Blah BLAH. To quote Smosh when Ianthony was still together: "SHUT. UP.!" Side note: I stopped watching the day Anthony left but had unsubscribed before that. Now, I regularly watch Anthony's channel. To paraphrase Lindsay Ellis as Nostalgia Chick's "Ferngully" review: And now back to this festering pile of pointlessness! A few pages of the book involved an evil twin...doppleganger...thing. Boring, weird and stupid. This book is all over the place.

There's a lot of 2004 LiveJournal stuff in here, which was cool at first. Lots of memories. MySpace had those survey things too. Now, they're slowly happening on Facebook 2021 for the theatre performer crowd. There's a lot of playlists. music references, and the LJ entries' mood and music fields are always filled out by each character. That could have been neat in a better book. You know what song should have appeared on David's playlist a lot? "Little Girls" by Oingo Boingo. It's catchy but creepy, and fitting of David. FWIW, I choreographed my first modern dance piece to it, a commentary on the ballet industry, when I was sixteen. It won an award.

Ashleigh showed up in the book here and there until roaring forth as the book's only real plot point on page two hundred and forty-five. The plot lasts barely ninety pages. The paperback I got ahold of was nearly four hundred pages. The plot is unfortunately stunningly problematic: Ashleigh is seventeen. David is nearly a decade older, and knows this. Ashleigh ran away from arguably emotionally abusive but certainly controlling parents. David has not been a mentor to her--their exchanges online read like a romantic attempt on -David's- part. NO! BAD AUTHOR! BAD!

David reveals himself as a shit-headed, boundary-less cowedly moron at best. At worst, I wonder if he's read a book called "Catcher in the Rye." A guy about David's age is into younger girls, too: his sister. But the guy is a rumored sociopath, so David's probably terrified of the book. Ashleigh literally shows up on David's doorstep without warning. I wager most adults would start screaming for a neighbor, and CALL ASHLEIGH'S PARENTS, FOLLOWED BY THE FBI SINCE SHE CROSSED STATE LINES. David, um, chooses to have her sleep at his apartment. He acknowledges he's breaking the law. He buys her food. He takes her to the fair, which...my skin was crawling and I was trying not to scream. David gets her on a plane. She has been savvy enough this whole time to get to New York and to his doorstep with no problems. She is convincing enough to have him come with her. He needs very little convincing. THERE ARE ADULTS ALL AROUND YOU AT THE AIRPORT, YOU MAN-BABY. GET HELP. Ashleigh says to the flight attendant that they're engaged. I had to set the book down so I wouldn't cry. The flight attendant thinks this is wonderful and I think she's on crack. David whines about buying an expensive plane ticket; another, much more expensive one when a little girl pouts at him--oh ew, I just became even more convinced of his inclinations--and then buys flight snacks and stuff, all on his emergency credit card while whining it's overpriced. Hey David, here's a bright idea. CALL THE FBI AND USE THE MONEY FOR ATTORNEY'S FEES AND BAIL AFTER WITHDRAWING CASH SOMEHOW. CAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL ASHLEIGH'S PARENTS. They'll probably call the FBI -FOR- you, you cowardly utter creep.

Doesn't happen. Ashleigh feels him up and kisses him. He pretends to flip out and she explains how she interpreted the situation when he doesn't want to sleep with her. I alternated between going thermonuclear and being horribly disgusted. Then the doppleganger subplot was back. When it was over, so was the book. My nerves were shot.

I think I can answer this already, but Andy Greenwald, what is WRONG with you?
Save your minds and nerves, and skip this book entirely.… (meer)

A great history of the roots of the emo scene (Washington DC's emotional hardcore music) and how it has transformed over the past decade. Greenwald doesn't fling recriminations or place blame, which is admirable in a genre of writing that many authors seem to have trouble remaining objective in.

The later portions of the book focus in on a couple of acts Greenwald identifies as quintessentially "emo." Whether the study suffers from this perspective is up to the reader to decide; I personally enjoyed it, though I don't think this is the best approach for one looking for a more general overview.… (meer)

While entertaining, this felt like an exercise on the part of the author to prove his hipness. Hippitude? Hipnacity? Whatever. It felt like showing off. I kept reading it despite feeling intentionally left out of what is clearly a huge inside joke. All the silly band name references, few of which I’ve heard of, the club and party references, the DJ slang and the New York writer vibe – all of it was lost on me and did not impress. Instead it felt choked with tedious detail.

As a recorded book, it didn’t work as well as it probably did as a printed book, since a lot of it consists of blog entries and email and text messages. The parts that did work were David’s narration and his phone messages.

Exactly how the alter ego became flesh is not explained. What happens to him in the end is also not explained. What happens in between is horribly funny in a malicious sort of way. David is written to be extremely likeable, but I found him annoyingly childish. I guess it’s the age difference. But even when I was 28, I had some brains and didn’t let myself in for the manipulation and stupidity that David lets himself in for. And he makes fun of early 20-somethings as being blindly young. Define irony.

The whole part where Ashley escapes from her Mormon prison in Utah to find him is a case in point. A smart man would have called the police and had her whiny ass hauled back to her ultra-conformist parents pronto. But no, he indulges her wish to stay the night. Then her desire to go to Coney Island. Then he lets her con him into driving with her to the airport where he realizes too late that when she said that he had to come with her, she meant all the way to Utah. He does, tapping into his parent’s “emergency” credit card. (who still has one of those at 28?) There he is further dragged and ends up at her chillingly stark and bleak home, only to be discovered by early returning parents. Of course he talks his way out of things and handles a situation that had it been orchestrated by his alter ego, he wouldn’t have a clue how to diffuse it. Air travel must have made him smarter.

Meanwhile back in NY, things have come to a head and David 2 has trashed his house, ruined his credit and basically his life. With a stolen passport, DL and credit card, he’s booked a flight to The Hague to meet Amy, the erstwhile girlfriend. Now that David 1 appears to want what David 2 has, David 2 decides to want what David no longer does; Amy and a settled, domestic life of responsibility. The thing that David 1 cloaked himself in to such an extent that this alter ego sprang to existence.

The upshot “message” is be true to yourself; all of yourself. Let all of your little foibles, bad habits and unnatural desires take hold and have a place in your life. If part of you wants to take drugs and be an asshole – do it and be it. If others don’t approve or don’t like you, they’re not worthy. How uplifting.… (meer)