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A note
to the squeamish: No genitals were harmed in the pages of
this book.
Castration
Celebration is no misnomer, though. In Jake Wizner's second
novel, a teenager named Olivia composes a play of the same
title, in which a group of girls (mostly lesbians) sing a
musical number supporting the mutilation of masculine naughty
bits. The ideas are head turning, but the novel lacks the
wit and thoughtfulness to match.
While
attending a summer arts camp at Yale University, Olivia decides
to spend the term shunning boys and lambasting unfaithful
men in her musical. Her motivation is believable despite the
cliché: Before leaving home, Olivia caught her university
professor father having oral sex with one of his students.
One might expect Olivia to begin the novel in full man-hating
mode, but her intentions are jeopardized from day one, when
handsome ladies' man Max literally bumps into her and falls
for her red hair, good skin and sassy humor.
Olivia
also develops an immediate interest in Max, which is a testament
to her lack of conviction: The character who swears off boys
on page two is smiling and flirting with the scruffy, hump-and-dump
womanizer on page three. Worse, she plays up their mutual
attraction and overabundant sexual repartee to create fodder
for her musical, allowing Max to chat her up until he begins
eyeing first base.
Wizner's
sense of conflict is flimsy at best, as the characters either
overcome adversity too easily or back down without a fight.
Readers hardly need half a brain cell to see that the only
obstacle between the two teens and a round of naked tonsil
hockey is the fun in watching Max jump through hoops to get
a date with Olivia. However, Max—a confident acting student—seems
impossible to embarrass. When Olivia commands it of him, he
has no qualms extolling the virtues of castration to a dining
hall full of high school theater students or otherwise emasculating
himself for her pleasure. Nothing is jeopardized in his pursuit
of Olivia—not his reputation, not his pride, not even
his ability to get laid—and this lack of struggle makes
for a humdrum read.
Even
at their best, the characters have less emotional depth than
cabbage, which is not surprising given the one-dimensional
personalities Wizner has given them. The supporting characters
are a disappointing array of stereotypes: Annoying Neo-con,
Token Lesbian, Sluttastic Barbie, and the alarmingly dismissed
Potential Anorexic. Somehow, Wizner even manages to describe
these cookie cutter personalities too vaguely to fit a personality.
Max's roommate Zeke, for example, is described as a tall,
skinny musician with long hair and a penchant for pot, which
could describe almost any musician from grunge rocker to hippie,
Bob Marley to John Lennon. Not until the following chapter,
when Olivia finally meets Zeke, is he dubbed "Heavy Metal
Rocker Boy."
Castration
Celebration is rife with careless writing and missed opportunities.
Wizner seems too preoccupied with creating shocking, occasionally
effective sexual banter to notice that he has given two characters
nearly the same name (the playwriting teacher is named Maxine),
nor does he bother to explore the troubles given to Zeke,
whose preoccupation with a friend's drug addiction doesn't
faze his own heavy drug use or behavior until it serves a
feeble purpose: an opportunity for Max and Olivia to invade
his privacy together. Even a phone call from Olivia's heartbroken
mother regresses into summary as soon as a modicum of emotion
and introspection is expressed.
Oddly,
Wizner doesn't even seem interested in writing for his target
audience, choosing to make dated pop culture references to
Mork and Mindy and Cheech and Chong rather than Gossip
Girl and Harold and Kumar. A list of doable celebrities
cites only one man younger than 30 (Jake Gyllenhaal), thus
ignoring age appropriate men such as Robert Pattinson and
Zac Efron (an obvious choice, given the book cover's spoof
of High School Musical). Instead, Wizner takes a turn
for the creepy by citing Ian McShane, Jean Reno, and Alan
Rickman, all of whom are old enough to be the characters'
grandfathers.
More
than anything, Wizner's goal with Castration Celebration
seems to have been to squeeze as many sex-related jokes into
one YA book as possible. Unfortunately, most of the quips
are forgettable, and the most memorable joke is only noteworthy
because it's made at the expense of another book (Max pens
a song to the tune of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" about Edward
Cullen performing oral sex on a menstruating Bella Swan).
What Wizner seems to forget is that a bit of shock value potty
humor is never a substitute for decent, believable storytelling.
If Wizner hopes to live up to his witty titles, he'd best
start with the basics.
(July
2009)
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