I TOOK THIS CLASS IN COLLEGE ABOUT ISOLATED CHARCTERS IN LITERATURE, IT WAS VERY BAD FOR MY SOCIAL LIFE

after school ended all my thoughts fell apart and hid themselves in strategic spots around my apartment. I'm not trying that hard to pick them up. it's like I want summer to be a break from being whatever I was during the year; I want to try being a jock or a dancer or someone that has never cared about literature or language or archetypes or the brain. like how it'd be easier to appreciate life if you could just know what it was like to be dead for a little bit. (see below..)

having a contest in my head for which adolescent-angst story will best stand the test of time; I have a whole collection of these queued up in my brain as though I had lived them, as though they're my own memories and I lived multiple lives in these multiple stories. I will never hesitate to admit that I fucking love me some quality adolescent angst, and the term "coming-of-age story" makes me salivate.

so now, it's time for considerations and comparisons. I'm taking out of the running stories which didn't make me feel the angst; stories like this side of paradise, in which amory is so obviously playing at being confused that it doesn't hold as a tension device; and the brief wondrous life of oscar wao, where the angst feels kind of second-hand and indirect and, more often than not, comical.

I suppose you can't really start a discussion of this without first naming catcher in the rye; I don't really see how you can beat this book for sheer character, voice, and these stealthy nods to coming-of-age archetypes, like when holden can't cross the street because he's afraid he'll fall before he gets to the other side. there are a couple of funny things about catcher: one, the parents don't seem all that bad, they seem pretty normal. they show up hardly at all. I think this is what led to a lot of my peers in high school sort of hating this book for being "whiny" or something.

the other odd thing is that holden doesn't change much through the course of the book; there's not a whole lot of difference between the holden at the beginning of the story and the one who's supposedly telling it from an institution or whatever. the book ends with the defeated line, "don't ever tell anyone anything, you'll start missing everyone," which sort of indicates that maybe holden has recognized a little that he mistreated people and should've appreciated them, but it's not much as far as character change goes.

harold and maude goes in the opposite direction (or as opposite as you can go for stories that feel like they take place in the same universe), and you see a very deliberate "character arc" being carved out: basically, harold learns to appreciate being alive. (seriously, boil this film down to its basic components and it seems scoff-worthy.) the harold who in the beginning feigns his own death a dozen different ways (and seems to possess no natural, human facial expressions) is very different from the character who's blowing bubbles in maude's bed.

the other 180-degree turn it takes from catcher is the total mockery of the parental and societal figures in the world; harold's mom and uncle are so ridiculous this movie almost verges into camp. I sort of resent the maker of the film for making it so easy to hate everyone around harold except maude, and yet it works because in many parts it is incredibly funny. the other reason it works, of course, is because it's balanced out with maude's very genuine carpe-diem spirit and love for the world; there's plenty of genuine feeling in this film. that moment where they flash to maude's holocaust-camp tattoo and then, barely showing it for a second, to maude pointing out how beautiful the sky is, may or may not strike you as cloying, but it's likely that you're so far on harold's side that you'll go along with it.

all of these characters have therapists. in fact, donnie darko might be harold and maude if you replace the carpe-diem message with deux-ex-machina. they both have disturbing visions; they see therapists for this reason. in these scenes, the therapist is not an entirely evil character. donnie's therapist even becomes a borderline appealing character, although she clearly is not cool enough to laugh or go along with it when donnie, under hypnosis, puts his hand down his pants. harold's therapist seems stupid but well-meaning. in both cases, and this is a key thing, I think, with these coming-of-age stories, the patient does not entirely resist the idea of being helped, of opening up, with the irrepressible hope that maybe, despite how uncool and idiotic these suit-and-tie characters are, they might offer some kind of wisdom.

which reminds me of every scene ever written by david foster wallace with a therapist in it. I sort of think that parts of infinite jest could be considered a coming-of-age novel on their own; certainly, hal was what I focused on the first time I read the book. the scene in the beginning, where hal's dad is pretending to be a therapist, simply reeks of the exact same pathos that permeates the aforementioned films. the therapist is almost a confidant, yet never manages to quite shed the external signs that s/he is part of the whole stupid mess that made this young person feel alienated in the first place. of course, when DFW tackles this emotional paradox he adds another layer of consciousness that you can't quite get in a film, where a character would freak out for about a page about using such a pretentious term as "alienated."

the graduate has a character reaching this same point of absolute alienation a few years later than harold and holden did; the narrative thus deals with situations that are a little more adult than the other films (although I guess it's true that harold dates a woman MUCH older than mrs. robinson). but this film is harold and maude, it's donnie darko, it's catcher in the rye. the way I can tell this is that the gaze is exactly the same in all three films: I mean, this is basically this is basically this. (harold and maude and the graduate actually have a lot of shots that recall each other; maybe because they were both shot in california?)

and guess what - all these stories are centered around male protagonists! which means that the catalyst is always a love interest, always a girl. (perhaps this is why holden doesn't quite complete that character arc - his love interest never pans out.) but what about the girl?

it's been, admittedly, years since I read the bell jar; I'm not sure why it's made less of an impression on me, maybe because it seems to lack the humor that the other stories have about themselves. I don't think we ever had to read it for school. I'm not quite sure what the female model of the coming-of-age story is; I don't have enough personal examples. I think it might be something like amelie, which I would count in this group. it's also the only european work I've considered here.

so there is this type of coming-of-age story that is american and male, and I'm sure I'm not the first person to have noticed that. I think it's interesting that these stories always remain very pro-individual; the character arc is never joining with society, realizing one's adulthood by finding a useful role in it. it's always "finding oneself" and society be damned. what happens to these characters right after their story ends - donnie's dead, harold is wandering around playing a banjo having just destroyed a car, and the famous example of benjamin and his stolen bride sitting there awkwardly in the back of the bus with more than a hint of anxiety in their faces - is probably not nearly as triumphant as what came before. I think it would be quite an achievement if we had a) stories that centered around females and b) stories that weren't so defiantly pro-individual throughout, but showed the character learning how to appreciate other people.