In high school, I did my best to morph from shy wallflower into mysterious guitar-slinging writer. Not as a pose, but because I felt the most ME when I was jamming with friends or banging out a story. I thought I found myself and my group. I wanted, more than anything, to ring true. I wanted to surround myself with people who wanted the same thing. That was my ideal life. 
Fast forward fifteen years. I’m an attorney walking downtown, lost in thought about some projects, when a group of middle schoolers on a field trip walk by. A skater kid overtly up-downs me and says, “Nice tie, Mr. Businessman Man!”
The kid walked away, not realizing he’d just thrown a hilarious grenade of insecurity and self-reflection in my direction and opened up my guts.
“Wait!” I wanted to yell after him. “I’m not The Man! I’m YOU!”
But, I had to ask myself, did I sell out?
That’s more or less what Wolitzer’s The Interestings is all about. The hefty piece of literary fiction follows a handful of friends who meet at a summer art camp. The book spans about forty years, from the time they meet at art camp in the 1970s to the present. Jules is the marginally talented, gawky girl happy to the be in the group. Ash is beautiful, talented and kind. Ash’s brother Goodman is the camp’s sex god screwup. Cathy is the dramatic dancer, Ethan is the animation genius, and Jonah is the unknowable musician. They’re the Art Camp Avengers.
As the reader expects, not every camper necessarily follows their teenage dream. Wolitzer explores if moving on from those dreams is settling, moving on to other goals, or maybe just life. It’s a thought-provoking exploration of the lives that we build and whether or not they are enough.
Oh, I have had those moments, too. That moment when a kid looks you up and down and dismisses you as a grown up or a sell out and you want to scream, “But I’m funny and weird and different and not like the other moms!” even though you come to realize that you sort of are and then you get sad about your life.
I have a thirteen year old.
It happens pretty often.
Oh man – I’ll have to mentally prepare for The Middle School Years.
My father taught middle school (band, of all things – the fool) and he used to say that all middle schoolers should be shipped to an island for three years and whoever is still alive at the end of it gets to come back. I used to laugh and think he was funny.
I now understand what he’s talking about and seriously consider it at least twice a week.