LOST IN PLACE: Growing up Absurd in Suburbia

JOURNAL ONE---to pg. 67

The readers are quickly introduced to the wacky quirks and strange obsessions that make up Mark Salzman. He is an ambitious boy, with big dreams---to become a perfectly enlightened Buddhist monk before he learns to drive. He sits in his basement and meditates to sticks of cheap incense, wears a purple bathrobe as his ass-kicking kung-fu uniform, and dons upon his head an inexpensive baldhead wig he ordered from the back of a comic book. Kung-fu and the Zen way seems to be all that's on his mind, much to the chagrin of his pessimistic father Joe, who we meet early on as well. Joe is an amateur astronomer who seems not to get any pleasure out of life, no matter what the circumstance. Mark's mother finally allows Mark to join the Chinese Boxing Institute, a small kung-fu academy just outside of their town. This is where Mark meets the intimidating kung-fu master, Sensei O'Keefe--an amazingly powerful man who possibly has killed a man.

There are three things that I'd say I really have in common with this author, and are probably the main reasons I chose to read this book. The first is that I too have an obsession with Asian culture. Perhaps not to the degree that I meditate in a purple bathrobe at night, but I'm always and I mean always studying things about Asia, its people, and its customs. Though Japan is my forte and China his, I'd say we have enough in common to always be considered the weird one--while other teenagers are getting drunk and laid and who knows what else, we're learning to write kanji! Oh well.

We both also have big dreams, but live in a little town in the middle of nowhere, so we have nothing to do with those dreams just yet. I have a desire to go to a huge university, while Mark...err...well, he doesn't want to have to go through college but he wants to strike it rich fast. So you could say we both have huge ideas but nowhere to put them yet because neither of us can drive and we live in the middle of nowhere!

For a large portion of the book, Mark is questioning deep things such as the meaning of life. Though the meaning of life doesn't bother me much, I'm constantly thinking about philosophical things like this as well. And...while I'm looking to solve the answers to some of life's bigger questions through different methods, Mark is experimenting with marijuana. Ah well, it's the seventies.

JOURNAL FOUR---pg. 67 to 134

Mark begins to explore even more interests with Asian culture, including traditional Chinese landscape painting and language studies. He befriends an excited geography teacher who helps him with the language. Many adventures with Mark, Sensei O'Keefe, and childhood-bully-turned-best-friend Michael ensue, and we start to feel a real bond happening between these characters. Mark also manages to find himself a girlfriend named Annette. It all seems good until Sensei takes his violent tendencies too far and pulls a "strangling demonstration" on Michael...and Mark makes that his last kung-fu lesson.

I believe the audience this book is aimed at is for those teens and college-attenders who want more from life than what their current situation is giving them. Kids and young adults alike would enjoy this book because they understand the most what it feels like to be in Mark's shoes. We find ourselves cheering for the character when things go his way, and rolling our eyes at all the ridiculous mistakes he ends up making on his (eventual) path to college.

The purpose of the book is just a man telling the story of his teen years in a way that would attract teens who acted like him to the story, so they could have something which they understand and pull something from. Many teenagers could feel that this was the "story of their life".

I believe Salzman pulled the book together well in this way; his audience and purpose seemed obvious and he really did seem to speak to them. He was able to put drama, the typical teenage troubles, and a whole lot of humor into his story, and it made for an enjoyable reading experience.

JOURNAL SEVEN---pg. 134 - 201

Mark gets accepted to go to Yale but has no interest in going. He gets involved with pot and it turns his life in the wrong direction, especially when he tries to grow it in his parents' basement. This seems to be the part of the book where Mark makes a ton of stupid choices, and the reader gets annoyed with him. He eventually decides to stop messing with pot, and starts to practice the cello, hoping to get a major in music at Yale. He seems not to really be interested in Chinese stuff anymore.

The timeframe this book is focusing on is the teen years, because this is when Mark really started to realize what his life meant, or at least, when he started to question it. For a large portion of his young adult years, Mark is trying to figure out what to do with his life, and it's during this timeframe that the biggest parts of his story unfold.

He starts to realize things he didn't before, such as that Sensei O'Keefe isn't such a great guy after all, and that marijuana really isn't the key to eternal enlightenment. This is a time period when many bad things happen to Mark as well, so naturally they'd make interesting topics to read about.

This is also the time in which he made his most influential choices, whether they be good or bad. It's also probably this way for most people: your teen years playing the biggest role in who you are today. We get to live Mark's choices and we slowly start to predict what choice he'll make next, as we get used to this character.

JOURNAL SIX---pg. 201 to 267

Mark quits the cello, and finally decides to actually go to Yale, and has the time of his life there. He really enjoys the college life. But, in his sophomore year, Michael dies and from then on his days spin into a constant questioning of the meaning of life and death. This continues for a long time, until Mark's father simply can't take it anymore, and finally just tells him "Welcome". This is how the book ends, with Mark feeling helpless but at the same time, well, "welcome".

There were quite a few things I liked about this book. One was the way it portrayed the teenage mind. I felt that he did an excellent job of remembering what it was like to be a teen, from the bored age of thirteen to the impatience that comes with being a senior. And I'm sure he did well with the college-age spectrum too, but I'm not in college yet so I can't judge. The way he and the other characters in the book of the same age spoke were the same as how my friends and I talk to each other.

I also enjoyed the ways he kept the book moving along. I was never bored, and I was reading this more often than most books I've read lately because it was so exciting. This story was compelling to me in its depiction of the obscure teenage mind, the challenges and benefits of living in the seventies, and the Asian culture aspect of it. I really enjoyed it.

However, if you need something I disliked about the book...well, I'd just have to say the author's morals growing up. Of course I can't blame the book for that, just the author, but he seemed rather stupid throughout the whole thing and more often than not I found myself grumbling that he should just be a bit less...dumb. I suppose you could say this is what I disliked about the book.