Whompyjawed

by Mitch Cullin

Book Overview

Whompyjawed: 1.Askew, out of place 2.Off-center or crooked 3. (informal) a person of eccentric or questionable character; odd....................
Football is Willy Keeler's ticket out of West Texas, but only if he can keep the explosive combination of his intellect and hormones from destroying his high-school career. Not an easy task as he also contends with the endless demands of his girlfriend, mother, coach, and college recruiters...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743202082
• ISBN13: 9780743202084
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

at last an honest coming-of-age account

Told with from the perspective of a high school football player, Whompyjawed is an honest, engaging, and truthful account of teenage angst, confusion, and questioning. Rather than gloss over or play down the multitude of conflicting feelings young men feel, the author displays them without making excuses. Overall, it is a funny, sometimes sad, and good novel with characters that are finely drawn and believable. I recommend this book to both teenagers and high school teachers, as it gives some needed insight to the problems young men are facing in this uncertain age.

Nothing whompyjawed about this terrific h.s. football novel

Written with a unique voice and evocative sense of place, Mitch Cullin's debut novel, "Whompyjawed," is a complete triumph. The novel focuses on the inchoate and often inarticulatge yearnings and existential questioning of its protagonist, Willy Keeler, whose prowess in high-school football affords him the opportunity to escape the prospects of a dead-end life in Claude, Texas. "Whompyjawed" gains its stature from its reliance on the compelling, believable and authentic voice of its protagonist; Willy not only plays a great game on the gridiron, he speaks a great game as well, whether it be through his many internal monologues or external conversations with a series of memorable secondary characters who help compose the texture of his life. Cullin's memorable description of Claude, once fefined as the "real ass of nowhere," could well be compared with the atmosphere established in Larry McMurtry's "The Last Picture Show," Kent Haruf's "Plainsong" or Larry Watson's "Montana, 1948."It would be all to easy to caricaturize Willy Keeler's life: star football player, dates the gorgeous but virginal daughter of a repressive high-school principal, reluctant victim of paternal abandonment, observer of family disintegration, unknowing pawn of his football coach who is simultaneously paternalistic and cynically manipulative. These truths, however, grossly simplify the complexity and depth of the protagonist's life. Keeler, despite every inducement to play it safe, constantly questions his actions and tries to invent acceptable understandings of his life's direction. Football, Texas style, becomes a powerful metaphor of competition, deception and self-definition. Coach Bud's professed concern for Willy's future unravels under championship pressure; the adult's supposed maturity disintegrates as he blandly risks Willy's health for victory. Ultimately, Cullin destroys our culture's image of high-schoool football coaches as role models for innocent youth.Willy's increased disaffection with his high-school sweetheart, Hanna, leads to a powerful sexual fantasy and attachment to one of his mother's abused, broken friends. The author's treatment of adult and adolescent sexuality is one of the novel's special achievements. As well, Cullin sympathetically examines the multi-faceted and disastrous consequences of a fractured family. In a manner reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson in "Winesburg, Ohio," the characters in "Whompyjawed" suddenly and unpredictably become alive to each other, briefly, but powerfully, illuminating their deepest selves to each other. Willy's mother's brief and pain-saturated soliloquy about her family's past is perhaps the best of many epiphanies streaking across the novel's pages.Though many of the moments of this novel are whompyjawed askew -- odd or off-centered -- the novel rings true. "Whompyjawed" will remain with the reader long after its conclusion.

The Ol' High Lonesome

A warm, dry wind blows through Mitch Cullin's debut novel of the modern west. Only a few American writers--Tom Drury and Cormac McCarthy, for example--present rural lives so plainly and imaginatively, and with such scrupulous adherence to the details of fading places still very much alive.

Holden Caulfield Goes Southwestern

In his debut novel, Whompyjawed, Mitch Cullin sweeps the reader away to the tiny West Texas town of Claude. A town surrounded on all sides by the seemingly vast Texas landscape of mesquite and dustdevils. Out of this vastness rises Willy Keeler, a high school football star whose future is as big as the landscape. Through a tightly controlled voice, akin to Holden Caulfield, except in Wranglers and cowboy boots, Cullin captures the loneliness and confusion that yowls inside Willy. From a girlfriend that writes poetry loaded with pleas that Willy doesn't understand, to a mother that is either drinking with her ever-present friends or gone away working, to a coach that tries to act like a father figure, but often comes out hamfisted, trying to ignite a spark inside Willy to carry him through just a few more wins to the state championship, to feelings of longing for a friend of his mother's, to a star-filled future that Willy's not sure he wants to chase after or not. Throughout, Cullin displays an impeccable eye for detail through Willy's inner-monologue. He captures the subtle rhythms of a small town and its wide range of characters, with a divining rod of sensitivity. Whompyjawed is a funny, true, beautiful coming-of-age story. After you're finished, you feel you've left that specific place and time all too quickly, and want to return to start the journey all over, again.

A delightful coming-of-age story

I really enjoyed this read. It's light yet insightful. With a lauguage of its own, Mr. Cullin captured the essence of the small town and the lonliness of growing up with great sensitivity, humor, and above all, honesty. Like "This Boy's Life" and "Catcher in the Rye", this is a must read.