Rewind: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I am 38-years-old and just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower . Regrettably, I wish I were a 17-year-old who’d just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

After hearing this book was finally being made into a movie, I thought I'd move it to the front of the queue of books I'd been meaning to read, but never got around to for one reason or another. I really wanted to like this book, I swear. I’m not just being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian because The Perks of Being a Wallflower has meant a lot to a number of people I know. I understand that it’s supposed to sound “how a real teenager would talk,” or more importantly, how a real teenager would write, but I couldn’t get past the stilted, awkward prose. And that’s too bad because there is a lot of good in this book (even if PW called it “trite”). Most notably Charlie, the main character, has a gay friend who’s actually not a plot device existing only for straight characters to confront their homophobia. This is a big plus, and subverts the "gay friend" trope, but Patrick's story could have been more nuanced or fleshed-out.

I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't mention the inevitable Catcher in the Rye comparisons. That doesn't bother me so much, given that nearly every bildungsroman is measured against the template that J.D. Salinger created. Perks is written in the form of main character Charlie's diary during his high school years in the early 90s. An era, I think, that should be noted for its complete absence of a unified, or agreed upon, "culture." (At least in retrospect. Maybe I'm reaching here, because I also spent the brunt of my teens in that weird twilight that was neither the 80s nor the 90s, but I think it's as central to the story as anything.) Charlie is an observer (a "wallflower") to all these things happening around him, and even to the things that happen to him. Without giving too much away, it's a sparse little story that deals with BIG ISSUES and does so without being preachy or patronizing. Also good things.

That being said, there's something lacking. I wish I could have read this when I was a kid; maybe I would have had a more positive reaction and less historical distance. Full disclosure: I’m not an adult who reads YA lit. I’m not sure I read a lot of it when I was young. I know for sure there wasn’t the market for YA books like there is today. (The Perks of Being a Wallflower was published in 1999.) And there definitely wasn't a lot of choices in LGBT lit for teenagers that didn't send a big huge message that homosexuality was immoral, or at least, doomed one to a life of loneliness and disease (the perks of coming of age in the AIDS era). In that respect, things have improved vastly -- this book being just one step along the way to that improvement.