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Book Review : Pete Dexter - The Paperboy (1995)


Order THE PAPERBOY here

Nothing looks more foolish than tradition to those who have none.

There is no greater sin for a genre novel than predictability. Giving in to the game of expectations can suck the life out of a story like an degenerative disease. Veteran readers such as myself need originality, fiction that creates its own paradigm. It's a rare thing. Pete Dexter's THE PAPERBOY received considerable hype since it's been turned into a movie starrting crime buffs' darling Matthew McConaughey and Zac High-School-the-Musical Efron in 2012. So I read the novel before sitting through the movie, because that's what readers do: test drive the original material before giving in to a cultural phenomenon. THE PAPERBOY was not a bad read, it has some of the qualities of what I call a transcendent read, yet it doesn't quite get there. It loses its way along the road.

Jack James is drifting through his early twenties after being kicked out of University of Florida's swimming team. When his older brother Ward, an investigative reporter at the Miami Times, and his partner Yardley Acheman barge into town on the trail of a red hot story of wrongful conviction, Jack tags along as their driver. Ward and Yardley are pursuing the story of Hillary Van Wetter, a local hick on death row for gutting infamous sheriff Thurmond Call, who allegedly stomped Van Wetter handcuffed cousin to death. His fiancée Charlotte Bless, who he never met in person, is determined to have him released, so they can live the happily ever after together. The boys are going to kick up a lot of dirt that had been lying still for a couple year. It's never pretty when people do that.

It took me about twelve pages to fall in love with Pete Dexter's writing. The man is GOOD and does possess the ability to create paradigms in fiction. His main strength is to imbue action with meaning and to never clearly reveal the intent of his characters. It's quite intoxicating if you buy in and try to draw the meaning out of every action and every scene, because it's what Pete Dexter is all about. Ward and Yardley get pulled over for DUI in the first couple chapters and they never speak openly about it. They just tell Jack he needs to drive them and that's the end of the story. Every characters ''gets'' that something must've happen to prevent Ward or Yardley to drive, but they prefer drawing their own conclusions than to pick at a man's vulnerable moment. In that regard, THE PAPERBOY is a eerily successful attempt at recreating a family atmosphere of the 1960s. I don't remember reading a novel that nailed ''the unsaid'' and the weight it carries the way this one does.

Matthew McConaughey is such an epic actor, I could NOT shake him off as Ward James.

What was a little less enthusiasming about THE PAPERBOY was its mystery and the way it unfolded. As much as this is a tremendous zeitgeist piece about the 60s and their ways, if you write a mystery, the mystery aspect of it has to deliver. Not only THE PAPERBOY's intrigue was underwhelmingly simple, it ends up taking the backseat to Pete Dexter's more literary endeavours of moral dilemma and personal investment. The reason why I became so enthusiastic in the first 50 pages gets booted from THE PAPERBOY about halfway/two thirds in. It even feels like Pete Dexter gets bored with it himself. I get that it wasn't the real subject of his novel, but if his characters get all torn up about something I cannot feel involved about myself, it creates dissonance that jars me out of reading. I finished THE PAPERBOY (like I always finish my books), but it kind of broke my heart in the end. Being disappointed by something blows.

I had mixed feelings about Pete Dexter's THE PAPERBOY, but you could argue I built wrongful expectations along the way. It swept me away in no time with its original paradigm and its ridiculously powerful sense of place and time, but I feel it lost track of what it wanted to be about at some point and finished in a whimper. This review should help you enjoy it more than I did, though. Don't read THE PAPERBOY for its mystery. Consider it a dark, literary, character-driven novel. Pete Dexter is one talented writer, though. Have no doubts about that. He has a way of writing characters that smoothly creep up on you. THE PAPERBOY is a tremendous display of his observational, yet seemless style. It's just not a novel you can lose yourself in, despite that it may give you that feeling at first.



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