Whompyjawed : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: You've gotta be kidding
Review: ...Whompyjawed does not describe a world I want to live in; it's a nightmare. The girlfriend is a date rape victim, not a virginally, repressed teenager. So I assume, by "sexual fantasy" you are referring to the attempted date rape scene. Ramona is a battered prostitue, not a temptress or good friend of the mother. Mom is not a waitress unless that is a new name for a hooker, especially on tax return forms.

There are many journeys through books that I want to take; this book is not one of them. If you find yourself wading through this violent roadtrip, choose an exit ramp as quickly as possible.

Rating:
Summary: at last an honest coming-of-age account
Review: Told with from the perspective of a high school football player, Whompyjawed is an honest, engaging, and truthful account of teenage angst, confusion, and questioning. Rather than gloss over or play down the multitude of conflicting feelings young men feel, the author displays them without making excuses. Overall, it is a funny, sometimes sad, and good novel with characters that are finely drawn and believable. I recommend this book to both teenagers and high school teachers, as it gives some needed insight to the problems young men are facing in this uncertain age.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing whompyjawed about this terrific h.s. football novel
Review: Written with a unique voice and evocative sense of place, Mitch Cullin's debut novel, "Whompyjawed," is a complete triumph. The novel focuses on the inchoate and often inarticulatge yearnings and existential questioning of its protagonist, Willy Keeler, whose prowess in high-school football affords him the opportunity to escape the prospects of a dead-end life in Claude, Texas. "Whompyjawed" gains its stature from its reliance on the compelling, believable and authentic voice of its protagonist; Willy not only plays a great game on the gridiron, he speaks a great game as well, whether it be through his many internal monologues or external conversations with a series of memorable secondary characters who help compose the texture of his life. Cullin's memorable description of Claude, once fefined as the "real ass of nowhere," could well be compared with the atmosphere established in Larry McMurtry's "The Last Picture Show," Kent Haruf's "Plainsong" or Larry Watson's "Montana, 1948."

It would be all to easy to caricaturize Willy Keeler's life: star football player, dates the gorgeous but virginal daughter of a repressive high-school principal, reluctant victim of paternal abandonment, observer of family disintegration, unknowing pawn of his football coach who is simultaneously paternalistic and cynically manipulative. These truths, however, grossly simplify the complexity and depth of the protagonist's life. Keeler, despite every inducement to play it safe, constantly questions his actions and tries to invent acceptable understandings of his life's direction. Football, Texas style, becomes a powerful metaphor of competition, deception and self-definition. Coach Bud's professed concern for Willy's future unravels under championship pressure; the adult's supposed maturity disintegrates as he blandly risks Willy's health for victory. Ultimately, Cullin destroys our culture's image of high-schoool football coaches as role models for innocent youth.

Willy's increased disaffection with his high-school sweetheart, Hanna, leads to a powerful sexual fantasy and attachment to one of his mother's abused, broken friends. The author's treatment of adult and adolescent sexuality is one of the novel's special achievements. As well, Cullin sympathetically examines the multi-faceted and disastrous consequences of a fractured family. In a manner reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson in "Winesburg, Ohio," the characters in "Whompyjawed" suddenly and unpredictably become alive to each other, briefly, but powerfully, illuminating their deepest selves to each other. Willy's mother's brief and pain-saturated soliloquy about her family's past is perhaps the best of many epiphanies streaking across the novel's pages.

Though many of the moments of this novel are whompyjawed askew -- odd or off-centered -- the novel rings true. "Whompyjawed" will remain with the reader long after its conclusion.