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Joe College: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Tom Perrotta
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $1.81
You Save: $12.14 (87%)
New (41) from $4.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 178800
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 0312361785
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780312361785
ASIN: 0312361785
Publication Date: September 19, 2006
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Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
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Amazon.com Review
Having penned Election, a great novel of high-school manners, Tom Perrotta gives us Joe College, a great novel about college mores. In 1982, one Yale junior struggles with George Eliot, dorm blanket bingo, dining-hall dish-line duty, a massive crush on a girl in love with his favorite prof, daily cards and calls from a girl back home in New Jersey, and a lush profusion of authentically individual yet instantly recognizable undergrad eccentrics. After an evening of ritualistic bong hits, kimchee feasting, and sympathetic discussion of Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who shot President McKinley, Danny thinks of his parents: "Was this what they scrimped and sacrificed for all those years? So their son could spend his Tuesday nights drinking beer, smoking dope, eating weird food, and learning to see the assassin's side of the story?" Yup, that's the way it was, and Perrotta's immense strength is to give moment-by-moment immediacy to his hero's tortuous internal monologue. Instead of dumping his Jersey girl, Danny figures, "if I avoided her long enough, she'd get tired of waiting and supply my half of the conversation on her own, thereby sparing me the unpleasantness of having to be the bad guy." Yet he is also capable of heroism, as when he impulsively defies no-neck Mafiosi who menace his dad's "Roach Coach" lunch truck, which Danny drives to blue-collar work sites during school breaks. What gives the story structure is the collision in our hero's soul between his former life and the world of towers, moats, and upward mobility. He can't quite identify with his hometown reverence for Bruce Springsteen, but it rubs him wrong to see Springsteen LPs played "for the enjoyment of people who were going to end up being the bosses of the people the Boss was singing about. Nobody in Entryway C was born to run." Election may have a better plot, but Joe College scoots along like a waterskeeter on a marvelous stream of consciousness. Tom Perrotta was born to write. --Tim Appelo
Product Description
Populated by a vividly drawn cast of characters -- Yale students and lunch truck drivers alike -- JOE COLLEGE evokes two radically different worlds through Tom Perrotta's distinctive combination of humor, sweetness, and telling detail. JOE COLLEGE is a serious comic novel about love, higher education, and food service, a uniquely American story about the mistakes we sometimes make and the illusions we have to shed on the way to finding our place in the world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
Fear of Failing March 29, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Tom Perrotta has proven that he is a witty and observant wordsmith, crafting tales that are subversive and insightful without seeming to be either all at once. "Joe College" is a purely adolescent romp through college and dorm life, the not-quite-so-real world before you must face reality and become an adult. That is the central concept that the main character Danny must face as we follow him during his junior year at Yale.
Danny is from a working middle-class family who feels obligated to his dad for scrimping and saving so he could attend a college that may be slightly out of his league. The past summer he helped his dad out at his new job, a drive-around lunch truck called the Roach Coach, and will take over at the reigns during spring break while his dad is incapacitated. Danny cannot reconcile his life back home with his life at Yale, feeling that he only fits in with his band of misfit roommates and friends, yearning desperately after the cliche pretty girl who is dating one of their professors. As spring break approaches, Danny fervently tries to avoid his "girlfriend" from back home, an unlikely hookup that may spell certain disaster for all of his future plans.
"Joe College" is a lighthearted, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny read, but it falls flat towards the end. Readers will find themselves vacillating between liking Danny (like when he stands up to certain mafioso-type thugs who want to push his dad out of business) and just wishing he would grow up already. His dilemma is that of a man choosing to grow up or remain immature, but by the end of the novel, no decision seems to have been made in a narrative that just seems to ... stop with no resolution. Perrotta is a gifted writer, vividly bringing to life certain early eighties' sentiments and frustrations without it seeming like mere nostalgia. If only his main character were a little more well-combined, "Joe College" might be an Ivy League read.
 Stunning! April 13, 2007
I've become a huge Tom Perrotta fan and have read everything he's written. Joe College is my favorite of the lot. Perrotta can be funny and touching at the same time, which is no mean feat. Characters are exceedingly well drawn and the dialogue sparkles. By the first ten pages of the book, you don't even care about the plot -- you just want to know these great characters better. Highly recommend!!
 Joe Average February 8, 2007
"Joe College" is a typically humorous coming-of-age tale, the twist (or, rather, hook) being that the main character, Princeton undergrad Danny, has to spend his spring break driving Dad's lunch wagon in working-class Jersey. The basic themes inherent in this coming-of-age story have been done time and time again, and the characters (to give you an idea of what I mean, Amazon calls some of them "instantly recognizable undergrad eccentrics") are no different. Imagine the secondary characters in Dead Poet's Society/School Ties/Scent of a Woman together in one story, and conspicuously littered with pieces of 80's pop culture.
That being said, Perrotta's numerous witticisms and sharp observations make the book an interesting light read. His prose is easy and fluid, his style personal and funny. The frequent dialogue is skillfully and naturally written. Overall, "Joe College" is a youthful summer romp masquerading as an emotional think-piece, and it would have made a better movie. Perrotta's stories make good movies (good within their own contexts) and it'd be nice to see him do more writing for screen.
If you like this style of novel and story, then perhaps read "Mall" by Eric Bogosian or other books by that author. Bogosian is different in approach and style, but reads just as fast and explores similar contemporary, everyday characters in everyday themes, however darker ones. I'd say that Bogosian's writing along similar lines is far more emotionally impacting and generally more interesting in structure and style than Perrotta, who tries to achieve the same effect but comes off a little too sweet.
Funny, Engaging Coming-of-Age Tale July 18, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Tom Perrotta is a gifted writer. "Joe College" is a pretty good book that centers on a working class youth from New Jersey who attends Yale.
The book focuses primarily on the class struggle of the protagonist Danny, who doesn't quite fit in with the trust fund kids of Yale or his ambitionless, working class friends from his hometown. The book does a good job of highlighting college life from Spring Break to work study jobs to dangling multiple romantic interests at one time. Perrotta's greatest gift is that he can insert a minor character, a line or dialogue, or an image that will remind you of what it was like growing up.
The book has a few flaws--for instance, the Danny character doesn't overcome his obstacles, instead, they solve themselves leaving him off the hook. Also, while it is easy to identify with Danny, he does have a few traits that make him somewhat unlikeable. This may also leave you thinking at the end of the story, "what was the point?"
However, it is still a very good book. Looking at Perrotta's other works, "Bad Haircut" is still his best book. "Election," which isn't as good as the Alexander Payne movie, is funny, structurally brilliant, and a quick read at around 200 pages. "Little Children" is decent but not as good as critics have said. "The Wishbones" is entertaining, but it is, by far, the weakest of his books.
Another winner from Perrotta November 17, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Fans of Perotta won't be disappointed with this novel. Perotta knows his material well (like our main character Danny, Perotta went to Yale, and I suspect he's probably from New Jersey, too), and he creates vivid characters that become a part of the reader's life. Danny is a privileged college student on one hand, but he works his dad's lunch truck and earns his keep in the college cafeteria, too. Readers are in for a glimpse at both ends of the class spectrum as Danny tries to balance his school and his economic background. The plot has been summarized well in other reviews, so there's no need for me to go into it, but suffice it to say that anyone who enjoys good literature will become involved with the characters in this book.
Anyone who enjoyed this book will like Perrotta's other works. The Wishbones is most like this novel, but Little Children is my personal favorite (it deals with people about ten years older than those in Joe College and The Wishbones).
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