by Tom Perrotta
“Perrotta … has drawn Danny so exquisitely … that you feel as if you know him pretty damn well … Danny is delightfully likeable—a Huck Finn of higher ed.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Perrotta’s eye for the minute, often skewerable, detail or reminiscence proves just as sharp and cunning as it was in Election. [A] quirky comic tale of young love and angst.”
—US Weekly
“No one chronicles growing up in suburban New Jersey in the late 1970s and early 1980s better than Perrotta … . [he’s] a master of the light comic touch and wry social observation.”
—Library Journal
“Joe College succeeds as a fast-paced, fun read.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A painfully funny, unsparingly accurate examination of the life of an eighties era ‘Yalie.’ Perrotta cuts quickly to the heart of the matter; the incremental betrayals, encroaching obligations, and conflicted motivations of a working class intellectual. Class warfare has rarely been so funny or so on target.”
—Anthony Bourdain, bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential
READING GROUP GUIDE
JOE COLLEGE
TOM PERROTTA
1. In their final encounter, Cindy suggests that Danny has taught her an important lesson. What is this lesson? Is it helpful or harmful to Cindy?
2. When he returns home for Spring Break, Danny has an epiphany of sorts, courtesy of a voice in his head:“I could just be myself, my father’s son, living out my life in the town where I was born … .I could learn to love [Cindy] the way my father had learned to love my mother … . all that could be enough.” Is this true? Or is Danny kidding himself?
3. Who grows and changes more over the course of the novel, Danny or Cindy?
4. Some readers feel that Danny gets off too easily in Joe College, that he’s never really held accountable for his actions. How does Danny himself feel about this issue? What about the characters around him?
5. What does Danny’s journey in Joe College tell us about social mobility and social class in America?
6. Is Danny simply living out the American Dream, an updated version of the Horatio Alger myth? Or is he the beneficiary of a flawed system that gives special privileges and opportunities to a chosen few?
7. The Lunch Monsters are a particular Perrotta creation. How do the thugs represent the author’s attempt to flesh out Danny’s guilt? Danny says, “There must have been something I was trying to prove by picking a fight with these guys,” but it’s not clear what Danny is trying to prove, or to whom. What do you feel he’s trying to prove? Could it be an attempt to assuage his guilt over Cindy?
8. At several points in the story, the author uses a pause and an absence of sound to indicate that a significant event has just occurred. How do these pauses provide a framework for the momentum of the story?
For more reading group suggestions visit www.ReadingGroupGold.com
St. Martin’s Griffin
JOE COLLEGE. Copyright © 2000 by Tom Perrotta. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Book design by Victoria Kuskowski
eISBN 9781429907804
First eBook Edition : July 2011
Title page and part title image used courtesy of Photodisc
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perrotta, Tom
Joe College / Tom Perrotta.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36178-5
ISBN-10: 0-312-36178-5
1. College students—Fiction. 2. Family-owned businesses enterprises—Fiction. 3. New Haven
(Conn.)—Fiction. 4. New Jersey—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566. E6948 J64 2000
813’.54—dc21
00-031722