The Perks of Being a Wallflower is The Catcher in the Rye for a generation of angsty Morrissey fans.
I begin this piece in trepidation and I state this knowing fully the consequences of my actions: The book Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky forever changed my life.
It’s not that I think I will be beaten up for that opinion. I may not even be criticized. (OK, I probably will be.) But I’ve begun to worry that teenage girls, like myself, gushing support and proclaiming, “We are infinite,” have inadvertently damaged the image of a book that has changed and maybe even saved the lives of boys and girls alike.
Perks is an epistolary novel which unravels the life of Charlie, a boy entering high school, innocent to a fault yet forever damaged by inescapable and in some cases unidentifiable parts of his past. Charlie writes letters to an unidentified recipient, detailing his life, experiences and thoughts as he learns how the world works. Many have identified with Charlie, who frequently feels confused and lost as he tries to navigate the confusing years of his adolescence. It’s the quintessential coming-of-age story. To paraphrase several critics, it’s a modern retelling of The Catcher in the Rye.
While it’s true Charlie’s feelings of isolation are feelings I can identify with, it’s the more alien parts of Charlie that I love. I hate and yet long for his naivety and his sense of wonder. I’ll never quite understand how he managed to make it to the age of 16 with such little information about the realities of life, about social constructs and dos and don’ts, but I love to see the world through his pure lens, and I despise every character in the novel who puts a little smudge on it.
Charlie wins you over right from the start, makes you angry he could be so incredibly naive and so blissfully unaware, yet makes you love him for it all the same. And sometimes, I think Charlie is the person I wish I was — someone who can dedicate himself wholeheartedly to a piece of music or a novel and devote his full attention to it, someone who strives every minute to do the right thing and be a good friend, even if it doesn’t work out, someone who would call the QVC host at 4 in the morning to say, “No, I wouldn’t like an exercise machine, but I hope you’re having a good night.” Charlie is so incredibly unrealistic. But when you’re reading, it doesn’t matter.
And that’s what makes it a good book, what makes any book good: You believe in it.
Perks is one of those novels that keep you up reading because nothing, not even your 8 a.m. class, can make you put it down. It’s one of those novels that make you feel like you’ve lost a piece of yourself when it’s over. And Charlie is the reason why.
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