Book 645: The Porcupine of Truth – Bill Konigsberg

And, I’m back to playing catch up. The downside of all these teen/young adult rom-com books is that I read them so fast and I just want more that I end up going from being ahead on blogging to being two-to-three books behind in just days!

I got this this on Kindle download after reading The Music of What Happens and realizing I was only two books from finishing Konigsberg’s current works. It so happens I downloaded this the same day I went to the library too pick up two books and came back with six books, including the final Konigsberg I haven’t read, Honestly Ben, which I’ll get to probably in two-to-three days at the rate I’m reading these!

I enjoyed the change of pace in this one in that the protagonist isn’t LGBT+, but is instead interacting with LGBT+ individuals. Still a teen novel, still has Konigsberg realistic style, just a little different than the others. Unlike his other books, with a gay/bisexual protagonist, this book isn’t about coming to term with ones own truth in sexuality, but more so in coming to terms with ones truth in being human. His dad is dying of alcoholism, he never knew his grandfather, and he’s made a new friend, Aisha, who is facing her own struggles.

I think he’s done a great idea of personifying a teenager, the wanting to be more than they are, the need to prove themselves, the desire to want to be respected and trusted, and yet having no clue about what in the hell is going on in their life or in the world. If anything, Carson is too disaffected. I get that he hasn’t really known his father, but I don’t see how he can be as blasé as he is about it.

“My mom the therapist calls these affirmations. I call them lies, but whatever.” (35)

“Is nobody pure? Is everybody fucked up? Is that life? Is that okay? Is it acceptable?” (301)

And then, he began to look at the bigger questions through of existence, religion and spirituality. He did it at first with humor and skepticism (of organized religion). I was basically looking into a mirror as Carson questioned his (and everyone else’s) beliefs.

“‘To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality.’ I laugh. ‘It’s all cheap stuff made in China?’ ‘Exactly.’ She flicks me in the back of the head again. ‘Exactly what I meant. I mean it’s prepackaged. Lowest common denominator. People just have to follow the preset motions and rituals and rules. They don’t have to think about how the words reconcile with their own hearts. Their own experience.'” (140)

“Sitting in a church makes you no more of a Christ follower than sitting in a Ford dealership makes you a Mustang owner.” (283)

I’m not sure I evolved in the same direction as Carson, but I appreciated Konigsberg’s truth telling and showing how fast a lot of teens have to grow up and have adulthood thrust upon them.

“I think Christianity is mostly good. I think religion is mostly good, even if it’s been the cause of most of our wars. That comes from a lack of flexibility, from not allowing others to disagree. Rigidity is dangerous. When someone tells you they know exactly what God is, run from that person.” (285)

“Maybe that’s God, right there. The thing that lets us believe three different things all at once, three ideas in conflict, and yet it feels rational and normal and okay. Maybe that’s not God. Maybe that’s just my brain.” (324)

Where I think Konigsberg REALLY excelled, was his writing about alcoholism and the devastation of AIDS on the older generation of gay men. The alcoholism/addiction depiction was scary real and this is the second novel of his that he’s done this, the other was The Music of What Happens. And how he tied AIDS to the story was unique (I think) and not something I’d read before. It was incredibly sad and moving and the two passages about the AIDS quilt (third, forth, and fifth from the end below) were beautiful.

Recommendation: I think I liked this more than The Music of What Happens, and that was a definite read, so this would have to be as well. It most definitely isn’t a rom-com and everything sweet is somewhat bitter and happily-ever-after in the story comes from sadness. This one has grown on me since I finished it because it’s pay off isn’t immediate. I enjoyed Konigsberg’s take on the older generation of gay men and his take on broken individuals and families.

Opening Line: “THE BILLINGS ZOO has no animals.”

Closing Line: “Thanks, I say. Thanks.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from The Porcupine of Truth
“I worry sometimes that our world actually values a lack of intelligence. Like we are considered normal if we spend our time thinking about what one of the Kardashians wears to a party, and we are considered strange if we wonder whether a bee’s parents grieve if said bee dives into the Central Park Reservoir and never makes it back to the hive. One of these lines of thought makes me want to carve my eyes out, and I can assure you it has nothing to do with bees.” (11)

“It is nice to have my own space, but it’s. . .I don’t know. Like a remote bunker where people store their afterthoughts.” (16)

“What really pisses me off is the whole ‘man of God’ thing. What is that? You disown your daughter in the name of God? I grew up with that evangelical shit. I’ll tell you, the second he kicked me out, that was over. Looking up at the stars in the zoo one night, I just realized. Religion is supposed to be all about loving thy neighbor, but religious people are hypocrites. Kicking your daughter out is an act of love? Please.” (45)

“Maybe in life, most of us feel inferior because we compare our dress rehearsals to Janelle Monae’s final performance. If I could just broadcast the Best of Carson Smith, and erase all the thoughts that go flat, all the jokes that don’t go anywhere, maybe I’d be amazing too.” (113)

“Some things you remember, and some you forget. Of the things you remember, you have to wonder what’s real and what’s translated into a memory from a story you heard. Like in this memory, my dad is wearing Bermuda shorts. I don’t think I knew what Bermuda shorts were back then, so how would I know that? Except I remember it.” (136)

“‘Don’t idealize me,’ she says. ‘I’m a human fool. We all are, and it took me a long time to become the happy person I am today. A long time.'” (139)

“I still have an East Coast perspective. Out here, the empty spaces can be as big as Rhode Island. Bigger.” (202)

“All these people. I look farther and see panels for women too. Little babies. All their lights, snuffed out. All their families, like mine. Broken up too soon. It’s a tapestry of lives lost. It’s hundreds upon hundreds of souls expressed in fabric. I cry for generations of pain. Not just for my family, but for all the families. I’m like a faucet, dry for years, and in the last week it’s been turned on slowly, and now it’s gushing. It’s ugly and snotty and loud and totally not embarrassing at all. I don’t care who sees me.” (257)

“It tore us apart. The disease. The way people reacted to it. Nationally, there was no reaction. Only fear that it would cross over and start killing straights. Otherwise, it was barely mentioned in the media, and the president didn’t mention it at all. Six years went by and twenty thousand died before he said the word AIDS.” (260)

“I put my hand on his back in a way that feels normal, now that I understand that he’s my blood. He is me, and I am him, and I am my grandfather. We’re the same. It’s freaky to think that someone who is just like me died of AIDS. That someday, I might get a disease because I’m a human and all humans get diseases and die. It’s part of life, I guess, and that makes me feel surprisingly alive.” (269)

“I smile. If you had told me two weeks ago in New York that I’d find heaven on earth in a grassy field soaked with dog urine, watching a fat guy smack his misbehaving dog on the snout, I would have laughed at you. But it’s not two weeks ago. I’m not in New York, and everything’s different now. At least I am, because now I can stop judging everything for long enough to realize where I am.” (295)

“I think that’s the worst thing you can do to a person. Make them believe that whatever you think about them, that’s what God thinks too.” (315)