BEHIND THE SCENES OF>> 10TH GRADE THE BUZZ: Great contemporary literature that matters. Critics say this Alex Award-winning author writes the way a 10th grader sounds. You be the judge. 10th Grade by Joseph Weisberg The story so far Tenth-grader Jeremy Reskin sets out to chronicle in exacting detail the ups, downs, ins, and outs of his sophomore year of high school. This excerpt begins two months into the school year. Jeremy has already met the girl of his dreams (Renee) and been introduced to the complicated social structure for which high school is so famous. Halloween NOW THERE S A BIG BANNER HANGING FROM THE CEILING IN THE Lunchroom with big smiling pumpkins all over it Halloween Dance Get Spooky. I m not saying everyone s thinking about Halloween in fact people pretty much don t think about it at all because who really cares about Halloween but you know it s coming with the pumpkins. Things are going OK with Renee I see her Monday Wednesday and Friday in Spanish and she definitely knows my name and sort of who I am the guy in Spanish. 1 day we re sitting there and Mr. Eller announces Dialogue Drill with the verb IR 1. I suck at the verb IR because it doesn t sound like itself when you use it it s like voy and vaya and 2nd of all it doesn t even sound like a word. IR. Versus say Comer 2 which is Spanish for to eat but at least sounds like a word so anyway he says Dialogue Drill with the verb IR and me and Renee get partnered up and I go over and sit with her. Hi Jeremy she says. Hey Renee I say. So then Mr. Eller announces begin drill and Renee usually goes 1st so I just wait she looks at the ceiling for a second then she says Yo voy a la escuela. 3 I nod and I say Si 4 but like a question Si? 5 so that then WHO IS JOSEPH WEISBERG? AGE: 37 BORN: Chicago, Illinois LIVES: New York, New York FAVORITE BOOK: DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens FAVORITE TV SHOW: CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM FAVORITE FOOD: birthday cake PUNCTUATI0N ALERT! When you begin reading, you might notice misspelled words, a lack of commas, and other things of a grammatically questionable nature. The writer did this ON PURPOSE. The lack of punctuation is a style decision made by the author to heighten the authenticity of his 10th-grade narrator s breathless voice. 6 SEPTEMBER 2003 Literary Cavalcade 1. To go. 2. To eat. 3. I go to the school. 4. Yes. 5. Yes? continued on page 8
with author Joseph Weisberg 11 I wrote this book so that people will know how hard it is to be a tenth grade boy. 12 10 9 9 2 1 3 4 5 8 6 7 PHOTO: FRANÇOIS DISCHINGER FOR LITERARY CAVALCADE. SPECIAL THANKS TO CAFE GITANE. 1. Antenna cable for satellite radio. 2. Two sushi stands glued together to make a monitor stand. 3. Books I can t fit in my bookcase. 4. TV that doesn t get any reception. 5. DSL line have to get a longer one 6. Martin 000-1. Playing guitar is more fun than writing. 7. Must wear shirt several times before taking to cleaners writers are very poor. 8. My entire apartment leans just like this bookcase. 9. Really bad speaker placement don t do this at home. 10. Books by my friends: Bruce Feiler, Jonathan Lethem, Gary Shteyngart. 11. Book by me. 12. Me. 7
FICTION >> continued from page 7 10TH GRADE EXCERPT FROM 10TH GRADE BY JOSEPH WEISBERG. COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JOSEPH WEISBERG. PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE, INC. 8 SEPTEMBER 2003 Literary Cavalcade she says Si because that makes it a dialogue. So she says Si and then it s my turn and before I forget how she conjugated the verb IR I say Yo voy la casa 6 (casa is pretty much my favorite word in Spanish because 1st of all it s easy to remember and 2nd of all unlike IR which when you use it doesn t sound like IR anymore casa always sounds like casa and 3rd of all because there s a restaurant Mi Casa which I ve gone by about 10 million times). Anyway I say Yo voy la casa and Renee says Si? and I say Si but lately Mr. Eller expects us to say more even after we ve had a dialogue and Renee looks at me and she says Tu vas Halloween Dance? 7 I m not sure for a second what she said but I think she s asking me if I m going to the Halloween Dance and it turns out I m right. So I say Si except then I realize I m probably not going I just say Si because you pretty much say Si no matter what anybody asks you and what if she s saying Do you have a date for the Halloween Dance? which I don t want to say no because then I seem like a loser but don t want to say yes because what if even though it s about the last thing that would ever happen even now that we re sort of Spanish friends she wants me to go with her so I say I mean no. No is no in Spanish and English and Mr. Eller just came over and started to listen to us so I want to explain my No was the Spanish No and not the English no (even if the rest of my dialogue sentence was in English) and I say to Renee I mean Si. No. Si. Like I m insane. Mr. Eller is right over us and it turns out he heard the whole thing and he looks at Renee and says Tu vas A la Halloween Dance. 8 Then he gets this mad look on his face with his eyes and everything and he says I mean Tu vas a la Halloween Baila. And then Renee looks at me and repeats it (because he wasn t asking her he was telling her the right way to say it) and she says Tu I say to Renee I mean Si. No. Si. Like I m insane. vas a la Halloween Baila and I say Si and she says Si? and I say Si. Mr. Eller goes away to bother some other people and we sit there for a second and then I look at Renee sort of down in the middle and I say Tu vas Halloween Dance? she shrugs her shoulders and looks down at her notebook. I almost feel a little bit like I just asked her to go to the dance but I know there s more I d have to say now like Do you want to go? but for 1 split millionth of a billionth of a millisecond I have the feeling like I might actually almost say it. Then the millisecond s over I look over at Juan Ramirez on his poster Mr. Eller says Termine Dialogue 9 which means the dialogue is over. The next couple of days I m walking around the halls and whenever I see Renee she looks sad she s looking down a lot and her face is just sort of stuck in the down position. I m wondering about her and is it possible she doesn t have a date for the dance and that s what s wrong and it makes me kind of sad for her. I 6. I go to the house. 7. Are you going to the Halloween dance? 8. Are you going to the Halloween dance? 9. End the dialogue.
LITERARY CAVALCADE: If somebody had asked you before you d written 10th Grade if high school was a bad experience, what would you have said? JOE WEISBERG: Horrible. Horrible. I think, I mean, really, you will not find a person who has thought about this more than me. I think about it constantly. I spent a year psychologizing about it and coming up with all the different reasons I would feel this or that, but I think [the reason] I finally came to was that really it was just bad because I didn t have a girlfriend. I think that really was the whole problem I was just lonely and I didn t have a girlfriend. I think academically I went to a good school. Socially I had wonderful friends. But I was unhappy. think about her a lot and how she is and does she like Hutch Falls or does she wish she was still in Japan and is she happy and sometimes I think I m thinking about her more than I think about anything else. Because what else is there to think about all the time? I know Renee is nice to me in Spanish because she s that kind of a person or maybe she just thinks I m nice and she likes me but sometimes when a person is a certain way you just know it means something like they could make you really happy or maybe vice versa but what isn t meant to be also isn t meant to be except in the alternate dimension where we don t live where everything s the opposite. Don t get the wrong idea I m not going to kill myself for her like Romeo who I probably sound like but maybe I would if I had to. Like if she needed me to. But I know it s stupid. Anyway John McKnight who is basically obviously the guy who s going to take her to the dance hasn t said anything in the locker room or at soccer practice or anything I heard to Randy and I don t know who else would ask her but still people don t always mean what they say or they don t mean the way they look. So who knows? A nyway something happened. The Halloween Dance was Saturday and Wednesday I saw Gillian in the hallway by herself by the library. Nobody else was around we smile and wave whenever we pass each other ever since the day we had lunch and we do. I was wondering by the way if they were going to all eat with me again but they weren t in the Lunchroom that much I think they were always out smoking on the balcony and bringing their lunch and eating it there. It was either that or they snuck off campus to eat which I wouldn t be too surprised if they did or they didn t eat at all. Anyway Gillian 1/2 stopped like when you re not sure if you re going to stop or not and said Hi Jeremy. Hey I said. How are you? Good. What about you? OK you know. She sort of bounced around a little. We re going to the city this weekend she said. Oh I said. Saturday for The Halloween Parade. You re not going to the dance? I said. No we re going into the city. Oh I said. We ll probably go in the afternoon and then come back on the last train. Uh-huh I said. If you re going all the way there you might as well stay late. I nodded. So I ll call you she said. OK I said. When we know when. continued on page 10 Literary Cavalcade SEPTEMBER 2003 9
FICTION >> 10TH GRADE continued from page 9 OK. I don t think I have your phone number. I told her and she pulled the top off her pen with her mouth and wrote my number down sideways in huge letters on a whole piece of paper in her notebook. The next few nights I was downstairs a lot because I wanted to be there when she called so I could get to the phone fast hopefully 1st but that was pretty much impossible with Beth and my Mom alive on this planet. But at least in time to keep them from getting it and asking who it is and especially Beth from the top of her lungs shouting Jeeeeremyyyy I just wanted to go to the phone fast like it was no big deal and just say hi. She didn t call that night and she didn t call Thursday night I was going downstairs a lot and my Mom was starting to look at me like I was crazy she was sitting in the living room reading womens living room digest or something and wearing her blue jeans which my Dad never wore and when I went through 1 time she said What ARE you doing? Nothing I said. You ve been in and out of that KITCHEN 10 times in the last hour. I m getting a dri Are you sick? She didn t call that night and she didn t call Thursday night... My Mom interrupts a lot. No. Do you feel alright? I m fine. Nothing s wrong? Mom! But you re going up and down the stairs so much. F riday night we were eating dinner. Here s what dinner s like at my house. We eat in the dining room which is next to the living room all sitting at a rectangle shaped table in the middle of the room. We have matching placemats but every night the placemats are different because that s 1 of my Moms things I don t mean they re different every night because you get back to the same placemat you had about a month ago but they re different every night. Here are some of the things on them: Plants, fish, Big Ben from London with the rest of London behind it, famous paintings by famous painters like Vincent Van Gogh, and Rembrandt, Monkeys, the Bronx Zoo with a lot of animals, just their heads, flowers, The Age Of Radio with a picture of an old radio in the middle and then heads of old radio people around it in a circle like Jack Benny, NY Mets which Mom breaks out on my birthday even though I haven t liked baseball since I was about 10, Lizards Of The Nile, Lizards Of The SouthWest (I guess they had a Lizard sale), The Ten Commandments which sometimes in 1 of his funny moods my Dad points to the 1 about honoring your father and your mother and makes a face, Chinese Zodiac, Great Battles of World War II, Wine 10 SEPTEMBER 2003 Literary Cavalcade
LC: Why did you choose to write about characters like Jeremy and his friends? JW: I wanted to write about the kids having an average experience. Because people are always writing the book about the quarterback, or the James Dean kid, and they re such a minority. LC: Why did you choose to write about 10th grade? JW: The intensity and purity of feeling that you have at that time, the emotionalism that is so unchecked and raw and exciting.... it s beautiful. I just think, you lose it as an adult, it s just not so much a part of an adult life. Maybe it s possible I d like to capture it again if I can. Growing Regions Of Northern France, Mickey Mouse and about a 100 others that she got on family trips and from kitchen stores. Anyway we re all sitting at our placemats and my Mom is serving dinner and you have to start eating because everything is according to her going to be totally ruined if it cools off even a little bit so we re about 1/2 way done by the time Mom finally gives a big very dramatic sigh and wipes her hands on a napkin and then sits down. Then almost every night unless my Dad s totally exhausted we go around and Beth when the phone rings I swear could get there before Bruce Jenner. tell about our day. Beth goes 1st. There used to be like a rule that you just talked about classes and what you studied that day or something you read or what my Dad called something worthy of discussion but about a year ago Beth had this kind of revolution where she started telling about her friends and stuff going on even with other kids that had nothing to do with her at all which my Dad didn t like but Mom put her foot down and Beth and Mom won. Not that my Dad is against friends. Just he likes stuff that s more serious for dinner table discussion. So from then on you could talk about anything you wanted and it even could be a little bit of a joke so I could say I ate a pickle or something and Dad didn t get so mad anymore. And Claire sometimes won t go. OK so there we are and the phone rings. Beth when the phone rings I swear could get there before Bruce Jenner. It s not like she gets so many calls or anything but she likes to answer it even if it s for Mom or anybody else because then she knows what s going on and who s calling who and everything about everything about the phone. But the thing is we re having Liver that night. You might think Liver is really gross but not my Moms. At soccer sometimes the guys give each other hell and a lot of times it s about mothers like Your Mother this and Your Mother that. 1 time Chris Halal said something to me and I said Your Mother can t even cook. Which I guess was kind of lame. But he didn t say anything else. So anyway my Mom really can cook especially when she doesn t make fish I don t care what you say about her and probably her best thing of all is her Liver which isn t gross at all it s better I swear than the best steak and it s got this pepper sauce on it that s really great and onions which normally I don t like or not like all over the top and they just rock and when we have Liver my Dads mouth is practically watering and even Claire who doesn t even eat anything eats a lot and Beth has about 20 helpings the whole time she s trying to take more so nobody notices by sticking her fork out low at the Liver and looking over at something else when she forks it over to herself like then nobody ll notice. So the phone rings and Beth now is in this big Liver versus phone conflict which with other food you don t usually have because usually the phone always wins and in the 1 second she sits there not knowing continued on page 12 Literary Cavalcade SEPTEMBER 2003 11
FICTION >> 10TH GRADE continued from page 11 what to do I start to get up but then before I m even all the way up she s gone and through the living room like The Flash or more like Reverse Flash who s evil and in the kitchen I hear Huh-low?????? with a big question mark at the end in this totally fake Beth voice and then there s a pause. And then of course Beth says Who s calling pleeeese??? which she always does but with a different kind of like she doesn t quite believe it sound in... and then there s another pause and I know it s Gillian. her voice and then there s another pause and I know it s Gillian. I wait and there s this pause and then Beth comes in and really loud so whoever s on the phone can still hear looks at me and says Jeremy it s Gillian! like she s announcing the President of The United States is calling and I get up and go to the kitchen and the receiver is hanging there. Hello I say. It s Gillian. Hey. Are you eating dinner? No. OK. Well I wanted to tell you about the city we re meeting at the station at 3:00. 3:00. Tomorrow. OK I say. So you re coming? Yeah. Oh. Great. I wasn t sure. OK. So and there s this pause and I say Yeah again for some reason and then there s another pause and she says I guess I ll see you at the station. Yeah I say. OK then. Bye she says. Later I say. She hangs up the phone and so do I. I go back in the dining room and everybody s holding their forks up over their Liver like some kind of atom bomb just fell on Hutch Falls. And nobody s eating. Even my Dad. So they re looking at me and I just sit down and start to eat but of course Ms. Nosy Pain In The Ass says Who s Gillian? This friend of mine I say. Is she that girl who wears black every day? Beth says. No. They re all still looking at me and finally I say A bunch of us are going into the city. That s wonderful my Mom says and she smiles this huge smile like good because I m going places with people. When are you going? she says. Saturday. 20 Minute Essay >>TAKE 20 MINUTES TO PLAN AND WRITE AN ESSAY ANSWERING THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: If you were to write your own version of this chapter based on your life, what Halloween story would you tell, and why? STOPWATCH VIA SODA 12 SEPTEMBER 2003 Literary Cavalcade
LC Book Club Questions 1In 10th Grade, Weisberg doesn t use punctuation. Is this effective? 2Does Jeremy seem like someone who could be in your school/class? Why or why not? Can you relate to his experience? 3What do you think of Weisberg s description of Jeremy s family? Does it sound familiar? Halloween? my Mom says and now she looks like I just said The day they do human sacrifices of all the people from Hutch Falls. Yeah I say. She says That s not a good idea. Can t you go another day? No. Why not? That s when we re going. But Jeremiah I don t like you being in New York at night and especially on Halloween with all those people running around in masks. People aren t more dangerous when they re wearing costumes I say. You haven t been in New York on Halloween Jeremy. Have you? No I don t go because it s not safe. I want you to go on another day. Mom it s the only I start to say but she interrupts me again and says There are 365 days in the year when you can go to New York but not on the 1 day when people are running around in masks. He ll be fine my Dad suddenly says. Abe my Mom says. Annie my Dad says and that s it. Before I fell asleep I sort of 1/2 thought 1/2 dreamed about what if we were all walking down the street in New York and a psycho-killer dressed as a skeleton tried to cut our throats with a switchblade but I hit him so hard I broke his bones right where they were on his costume too. I have pretty fast reflexes. Then I thought what if everybody s wearing a costume but me but I was sure Gillian would of said something if they were and they weren t the type of people who wear costumes anyway and neither was I. Classic Connections THESE BOOKS ARE PREDECESSORS TO 10TH GRADE BECAUSE OF THE BOOK HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1896) by Mark Twain CATCHER IN THE RYE (1951) by J.D. Salinger STOP-TIME (1967) by Frank Conroy THE STORY Unusual circumstances aside, Huckleberry Finn is a coming-of-age tale about a boy who copes with societal pressure, codes of behavior, and adults who don t understand him. Sound familiar? This controversial book tells the story of Holden Caulfield, who gets expelled from school at age 16. Holden sees through a lot of the superficiality around him, and eventually, it drives him mad. This memoir starts with a brutal incident at a boarding school, and relates the story of his transient life after his father dies. THE STYLE Huck tells his tale of escape and adventure in his own colloquial style, complete with spelling and grammatical errors. His voice on the page could easily be his speaking voice. Holden narrates his story in his own voice. He doesn t hold anything back, and he prefers slang to proper English because it gets to the point faster. Catcher ushered in the genre of young adult fiction. Frank is often compared to Holden Caulfield he narrates fearlessly, speaking his mind and unearthing the phonies wherever he finds them. Literary Cavalcade SEPTEMBER 2003 13