Now, in the midst of the autumn quarter, it has become appallingly clear that I don’t have much time for pleasure reading; yet reading is my vice, my emotional outlet, the foremost hobby that defines me. But O! the awful guilt I feel when sitting down to read for pleasure; couldn’t I be reading some required text? Yes, the reading of novels is truly my guilty pleasure. (A real latter-day Marquis de Sade, aren’t I?)
You would never see my guilty pleasures listed on your syllabi. “Ulysses” is too convoluted to read with ease. I’ll save Kafka and his cockroach for the classroom; I like my pleasure reading’s themes to hit right on the nose. Updike doesn’t have enough plot? The books I’ve been reading have enough to spare.
I’ve just completed C.D. Payne’s “Youth in Revolt” and am reading its sequel, “Revolting Youth.”
These two hilarious epistolary novels make up three of Payne’s six sequences chronicling the picaresque adventures of 14-year-old Nick Twisp. Twisp, a would-be writer, meets and falls in love with the ravishing Sheeni Saunders at a vacation trailer park and goes rogue.
The new rascal creates two alter-egos: the bad conscience badass, Francois, and Carlotta, Twisp’s female persona. Twisp journals the wild events that keep him close to his ever-moving sweetheart in these fine absurdist novels.
“Youth in Revolt” was adapted to film earlier this year, starring Michael Cera as Nick Twisp.