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Summary: Delano
Review: John Orozco is a brilliant satirist...His humor will have you smiling inwardly and laughing outloud from the first sentence to the last.
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Summary: An Undiscovered Treasure
Review: "Delano" by John Orozco is an intricately woven satire, highlighting the double standards and absurdities of our culture. A university setting in rural California sets the stage for hilarious Candid like escapades. Attempting to avoid work at all costs, our hero creates one complicated web of deceit after another until he is almost caught in his own trap. Published in 1999, this book is an undiscovered treasure.
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Summary: An Overlooked Gem
Review: ...This is not only a funny book (I mean to tell you every page is a hoot), it's also insightful. As intricate as the story is, the author has made it easy to grasp. It's fast, fun, and a real delightful read. My advice to anyone in doubt is don't skip it. It's a real treat, and a real shame that it doesn't have larger visibility. If it had, this would be a best seller.
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Summary: humorous, easy reading
Review: A very witty, fun, easy-to-read book. The characters are interesting, the plot is amusing, and the ending is unexpected. This book presents a subtle sarcasm of the college experience that college students will enjoy. Must reading for anyone considering a career in teaching or those who already are teachers, for the all-too-true scenarios of educational bureaucracy and parental "involvement".
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Summary: "College fits your lifestyle."
Review: After shooting off his big toe in Vietnam, Edward Delano returns home, and then is surprisingly accepted as a freshman at Del Norte State College in Northern California. Edward selects Del Norte based on the fact that it's cheap and far away. Edward's problems with higher education begin the moment he steps on campus, and his first challenge is finding a place to live. Students advertise for roommates based on either political or sexual criteria--"Neo-Trotskyite", "Neo-Buddhist, semi-vegetarian" or "Eco-feminist" are a few examples.
Edward's college career is in a slump but begins to turn around when he meets the legendary character, Winston Ashford Gonzales, a graduate student who works as an assistant in one of Edward's English classes. For the paltry sum of $50 a month, Winston offers to tutor Edward in the art of "how to succeed in college without doing any work at all." With the money in hand, Winston proceeds to show Edward how to thwart the system by using his tried and true methods. These methods include studying the professor and parroting back habits and phrases, dressing like a professor, checking out all the research books from the library, and reading the Cliff Note versions of reading texts. Soon Edward becomes an 'A' student and even begins impressing some of the female students.
The novel charts Edward's college life, and includes brushes with the New People's Army, various girlfriends, unsavoury roommates, and a vengeful biker. While the novel is funny in spots, for the most part, I found the characters uninteresting. The chapter about Edward's selective deafness was the most entertaining, but I found the characterizations--particularly of women rather disappointing. They seem to be mere caricatures. In addition, some of the book's opinions of political correctness rather interfered with the believability factor--for example, Edward takes a class on Hemingway, and the angry female students protest about the absence of female authors studied in the course. Consequently, the professor, under duress, adds Willa Cather, and Virginia Woolf. But by the fourth week, men are banned from the course too. Personally, I found this a little heavy-handed, and rather unfunny. Overall, this was a mediocre read, and not that funny--displacedhuman
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Summary: Deliriously satirical
Review: Delano by John Orozco is the story of an underachiever in search of a treasure. Beset by bizarre antagonists ranging from psychologically rabid vegetarians to inept detectives and a wicked yet seductive woman, Delano evades one peril after another to achieve his goal - yet claiming a treasure of any kind is not necessarily as simple a task as it sounds. Delano is a reader engaging, deliriously satirical, and enthusiastically recommended tale.
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Summary: A Real Treat
Review: DELANO is a real treat. It's everything it claims to be. It's one of the fastest paced books I've ever read. I enjoyed the characters very much. Sam is one of the most unusual people ever put in a story. The part about the worm farm had me laughing out loud so hard, people stopped to see what was going on. I even liked the villans, like Winston. What a jerk! But he says things that make you think. The best character is Eddie. I won't give away anymore. This should be a movie.
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Summary: Sarcastic yet poignant
Review: Delano is sarcastic, funny, and sadly, right on the nose. Orozco's Heller-esque commentary on the absurdities that permeate schools everywhere is testament to a system that becomes alarmingly more inept each year. His tongue in cheek depiction of educators more concerned with political correctness and rampant cronyism than the business of learning is absolutely on target!
And for even more laughs on our crippled school system, I suggest Lenny Castellaneta's "No One's Even Bleeding".
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Summary: Delano is a stitch!
Review: Eddie Delano and his world are a stitch! And like surgical stitches, Orozco's satirical needlings of domestic and college life sting as well as correct social and psychological deformities that characterized the surreal sixties. No target, large or small, eludes the author's jaundiced eye (check out the back cover art) or his sharp-honed pen--you'll feel its prick on every page. One asks no more of good satire. Combining the complete arsenal of satirical, humorous, comedic, slapstick, and burlesque techniques, this novel starts you laughing and wincing on page one, with Eddie's admission that he shot off his big toe to avoid Viet Nam, and sustains it through the hilariously implausible and implosive self-destruction of the whole sick crew. And they are legion: hustlers, cheaters, political poseurs, worm farmers, gender freaks, and doobie brothers (all of whom inhale). If you participated, especially as a student, in those hallucinogenic days, had children who did, taught that generation, or just nostalgically miss those sweet, sweaty summers of love, this is the book for you. Almost forgot. There's some interesting sex, too.
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Summary: Very Funny
Review: Eddie Delano is beset by one absurdity after another. He eventually finds happiness, but not before sinking into despair. I loved the character Sam. The drug bust scene was a bit over the top, but overall, I loved the book. If you're looking for light hearted humor that makes you think, this is it.
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