YA or STFU

Destroy All Cars, by Blake Nelson

Nelson, Blake (2009). Destroy All Cars. NY: Scholastic. 224 pages.

The first couple of pages of Blake Nelson’s new book are in the form of an AP English essay written by the novel’s main character, James Hoff, and entitled “Destroy All Cars.” A four page rant divided into sections entitled, “Primitive Machine,” “I Am So Sick of Cars,” and “On the Lameness of People in General,” this fictionalized essay sets the tone for the rest of the novel. Alternating between James’ progressively more English class appropriate essays (read: further essays attempt to follow James’ teacher’s admonition to, for one, support his claims with specific examples) and his journal-style first person musings, Destroy All Cars reads more to me like a slice of life than a novel per se. While, between the essays, James mourns the dissolution of his relationship with his girlfriend Sadie, goes on one sort of failure date, and then briefly gets back together with Sadie, there isn’t any really dramatic rising action, climax or real denoument. Then again, I read most of the novel in various windowless classrooms and in a bar while at an academic conference, so I might have missed something.

That said, Nelson remains one of very few YA authors who really manage to capture the high school experience in a realistic way. For one thing, in this book (as in his other novels), Nelson describes the existence of a semi-outsider but otherwise unremarkable high school student. Torn sweaters, thrift store fashion and anti-consumerism aside, James Hoff comes off as distinctly more regular and more regularly flawed than, say, Janet Tashijan’s “Larry” (from The Gospel According to Larry, et. al.). Like most of us, James lives a rather unremarkable life and passes at least part of his time commenting on but not necessarily interacting with the other kids in his milieu. For example, a number of chapters mention a new kid in school, a guy named Jebediah who intercepts the food kids would typically throw away in the cafeteria and then eats it. Whether Jebediah is making a more public comment about consumerism and throw-away culture is almost beside the point as we are party to James’ snarky asides about this guy who may or may not be a poser. When Jebediah is finally expelled and escorted from school, James watches him leave the building with the same kind of interested dispassion I remember from when I watched our residential college’s local drug dealer walked out of our building during one of our dorm lectures.

And that gets to the heart of what I like about Blake Nelson’s novels: sometimes things just don’t really happen. Or, they happen, but instead of happening to you, they happen to someone else, and you get to watch and enjoy the freedom to comment. Or maybe it’s just me.

The next comment is more of an aside, and not really a critique of Nelson’s novel but more of a “thought experiment:” why do you think it is that Nelson takes pains to situate James in an AP English class? Why not “regular” English? Or even “Remedial?” It’s not just Destroy All Cars that does this; lots of YA novels that use the old English essay trope as a premise take care to first distinguish the novel’s narrator (and essay-writer) as somehow academically excellent or talented or genius. Rob Thomas’s Rats Saw God is one example, but I’m sure there are a lot of others. I wonder if this conceit is one adult authors (and adults in general) think is necessary to craft a believable character. Like, “normal” kids (kids today, grumble, grumble) wouldn’t be able to write nearly as well as to be readable, let alone to reach novel length, so if a teen character’s writing forms the body of a YA novel, that teen must be somehow exceptional. The existence of novels like Sapphire’s Push that take pains to characterize its narrator in terms of her lack of educational opportunity through the use of deliberate misspellings sort of proves my point. In YA lit, it is the exceptional (exceptionally bright or exceptionally under-served) character who is granted the agency to write his or her own story.