Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies

by Tom Perrotta

Book Overview

New York Times bestselling author Tom Perrotta's first book is more powerful than any coming-of-age novel --The Washington PostBad Haircut explores the themes that have fascinated Perrotta throughout... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 042515954X
• ISBN13: 9780425159545
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

"I didn't realize it at the time, but that's when I was really happy."

For a Perrotta devotee such as myself, Bad Haircut comes as something of a surprise. It lacks Perrotta's signature style, the acerbic wit and satirical tone that have defined his spectacular novels Election, Little Children: A Novel, and The Abstinence Teacher. It's also a difficult book to classify - too linear and structured overall to adequately call a short story collection, but too broken up into pieces to call a novel. I suppose with this, his first published work, Perrotta was still finding his footing as an author, but it is a tribute to his talent that even while exploring the range of his voice the finished product still works, and very well at that. As I said, "Bad Haircut" isn't exactly a short story collection but isn't quite a novel. Think of it as slices from the life of a boy named Buddy, who came of age in the turbulent, disco-studded seventies. Each story is a chapter in the stages of his junior high and high school years, with book-ends from 1969 and 1980 to put a frame on the decade. We first meet Buddy as a young Boy Scout innocently star-struck when he meets the Wonderful Wiener Man, who tours the country in a hot dog costume and turns out to have a past connection to Buddy's mother (a first glimpse at the complex blend of humor and drama that imbues Perrotta's current fiction). Over the course of "Bad Haircut" Buddy loses that innocence as he makes all of the mistakes and realizations that typify the American adolescence as a segue into adulthood. In the final installment Buddy attends a funeral after finishing his first year of college, a funeral that will unexpectedly cause him to revisit the innocence of that Boy Scout we first met him as. It would be remiss of me to say that "Bad Haircut" is more serious than Perrotta's other works, since they all pack weighty themes beneath their farcical exteriors, but it does feel that way thanks to a poetic quality that he seems to have forsaken in those later novels. At first glance "Bad Haircut" seems superficial, but Perrotta's already remarkably deft pen only makes it appear that way. Each story packs a mean punch, and the fact that they flow so easily belies the poetic - and painstaking - structure that they follow. They speak volumes about American life, not just in the seventies, but beyond. Barring the absence of cell phones and the internet, "Bad Haircut" could just as easily take place in today's world. If I have a complaint it's that even though the stories all follow the same character, each one feels a little too distinct. Buddy seems to have a different set of friends in each story, even though they seem to take place no more than a year apart (in a few instances only a few weeks have passed). And while we get to know the people who populate Buddy's world fairly well, Buddy himself remains something of a mystery. It would almost be possible to believe that each story is about a different teenager who just happens to reside in the same geographic loc

Are You a Child of the 70s...?

Yes, you'll enjoy BAD HAIRCUT in a big way if you grew up in that strange decade we call the 70s, but you can enjoy it for many other reasons as well. If you enjoy short stories, this collection with a common protagonist, the autobiographical Buddy, is sure to whet your appetite for that most concise of genres. If you are a Tom Perrotta fan, you'll be pleased and surprised, as this book offers both the Perrotta hero you've become accustomed to in his novels (young-ish, male, funny) AND it offers the author at his most disciplined as a stylist. The stories contain little "fat," in other words, and thematically tackle all the major sources of boyhood angst from grade school days to college. The collection starts with "Weiner Man," the tale of Buddy in the cub scouts, a man dressed in an oversized weiner outfit, and his mother who knew Weiner Man from high school. Sweet and strange, it's the perfect gateway into this frank collection. It is followed by stories involving dating, fighting, family, school, drugs, and alcohol. Just your typical, red-blooded New Jersey suburban upbringing, is all. But what a ride. I feel this book is overlooked for two reasons -- it's an "early" work by an author who later became famous and it's a short story collection, which will always play second fiddle to the novel. Don't let it scare you away, however. Although anyone can enjoy this work, it's almost a sure bet if you're a male boomer out of the 'burbs. So go ahead. Get a haircut. Even if it's bad, they always grow out...

one of my favorites

This book really succeeds in capturing the feel of the 1970s in the way I remember them rather than the way the era is usually evoked through clothes, hair, music, etc. The stories go beyond describing an era, though. Rather, they recover from the very ordinary, bordering on bleak, surroundings crystalline recollections of a rich, comical, wonderful childhood.

Deeper than you may think

So easy to read, you may think of it as "light." But there are actually plenty of deep issues and real emotions beneath Perrotta's crisp, warm, deceptively simple style. I've enjoyed each of his books, but this is the one that's touched me the most.

Growing up in North Jersey (Union County) in the 70's

If you grew up in the 70's (and graduated high school at the end of the decade), this book is for you. It truly captures the essence of growing up in the post war era and deals perfectly with the mundane realities of the teenage experiance. If you are from North Jersey, the stories are even more meaningful. Read it and read it again.