The Spectacular Now
Oklahoma author Tim Tharp’s National Book Award-nominated novel The Spectacular Now lives up to its title, both as a spectacular read and as a story of the beauty and perils of holding on to a slippery moment in time.
The narrator is Oklahoma City kid Sutter Keely, who careens around Tharp’s piercingly recognizeable renderings of Bricktown, Heritage Hills, and the vast suburban sprawl of the Southside in a haze of of alcohol and testosterone. The moment described by the book’s title is Sutter’s final semester of high school, when adulthood can only be delayed for a few more precious months.
The likeable, troubled Sutter exists in a Charlie Brown world where adults are either incomprehensible or totally absent, and it becomes clear that his budding alcoholism won’t be masked by rebellious charisma for much longer.
Unlike many of his peers, Sutter isn’t especially looking forward to college or career plans. As he drifts from girlfriend to girlfriend on woozy weekends (and weekdays), he asks, “How are you supposed to know when you’re not a kid anymore in this society?” Soon an intriguing and unlikely new friend opens the door to an answer and one possible way out of the numbing suburban maze.
Tharp is a master at drawing young adult characters who are both more sophisticated than adults would think and a little less together than they believe themselves to be. While Sutter mixes martinis and holds philosophical discourses with his friends, he’s also crushingly oblivious to the ways his behavior affects the people who care about him.
Reviewers have both praised and criticized the matter-of-fact way Tharp illustrates high school drug use and sex. Rather than glorifying the thrills of late night partying or mixing in a pious sermon about the perils of pre-marital sex, the book honestly presents the life of a teenager the way it’s lived not only in Oklahoma but in every suburb and city in America. It’s reminiscent of the bluntness of Trainspotting, whose narrator allows that being a junkie surely involves “misery and desperation and death . . . but what people forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all, we’re not @#$%-ing stupid.”
Sutter is far from stupid, but he’s hurtling toward a destructive or meaningless end all the same. It’s a testament to the quality of Tharp’s writing that the reader wants so badly for the kid to pull out of the spiral, to recognize what we and a precious few people in his life can see about his promise.
SPECTACULAR UPDATE:
Variety reports The Spectacular Now is being adapted into a feature film by acclaimed music video director Marc Webb, whose debut movie 500 Days of Summer premiered at last month’s Sundance Festival. The film’s producer hilariously describes it as “somewhere between ‘Sideways,’ ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.’” I only hope the filmmakers are as true to the vivid Oklahoma City/Moore setting as Tharp’s novel is.
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A tip of the hat to Tharp for getting a movie deal out of this book. I think it’s hard for most adults to take themselves back to the feelings and conundrums of being a teenager. Sounds like he’s hit the nail on the head.