Cary
Smith, the nom de plume of Greg Hawkins, lives in San Jose, CA. He became interested in
books and writing because of a teacher. His favorite book is "Hocus
Pocus," by Kurt Vonnegut or “100 Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. He is currently either going to finish his collection of short stories
next or turn one of his short stories into a novel, which would be a new take
on the ghost genre.
His latest book is Four
Corners, Or a Book That Will Tickle Your Intellectual Nipple.
About the Book:
High
school. Those two words, for some, instill fear and loathing and vivid memories
of sadistic teachers, bullies, and bad lunches. For some happy few, however,
high school remains a misty paradise, where a student's budding
Cary
Smith, the nom de plume of Greg Hawkins, clearly falls into the first group, as
he describes in his hilarious new book, FOUR CORNERS, OR A BOOK THAT WILL
TICKLE YOUR INTELLECTUAL NIPPLE. With
a keen sense of the absurd, Smith thrusts his satirical sword straight
at the jugular vein of all things pretentious and pedantic that haunt the halls
of the educational world. Nothing is spared as Smith takes on the institution
of secondary education. Readers will wince in recognition at the cast of
characters Smith has created – the brains, jocks, bullies, cliques, incompetent
teachers and pompous administrators – who all take a good drubbing from the
flat side of Smith's sword.
“I
don't know why I thought that when middle school was over that high school
would be a brand new place, a fresh start,” Smith writes. “Maybe it was because
all my teachers in middle school were implanting their lectures about how in
high school the teachers wouldn't let you get away with this and that and that
it would be a very different place. Well, as usual, the teachers of the system
lied to me ...”
For
good measure, Smith creates another archetypal character – Brad Cruise, a
symbol of the pseudo-intellectual critics and pedagogues who inhabit academia.
If you spotted Cruise's name as a mash-up of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, that's
what the author intended.
Hawkins
also points out that, while Cary Smith is the “satirical narrator” of FOUR
CORNERS, “what we come to find out is that not only does he have a humorous
side, he has a serious side, and he does, in fact, care, despite what he may
say.”
Although
much of Smith's writing is clearly based in personal experience, Hawkins says
the book is satirical fiction. The book's style is steeped in hyperbolic
language and literary hi-jinx that hark back to the 18th-century comic classic TRISTRAM
SHANDY.
“I
wrote FOUR CORNERS to entertain
people,” Hawkins says, “not only to help people get through the turbulent time
that is high school in America, but to make people feel OK about the time they
spent during those years.” He adds:
“There is no one, to my knowledge, writing with this type of narrator,
about this subject matter, in such a style and manner, and writing humorously.
It is very hard to find a good book with a blend of the serious and comedic.”
Guest Post:
My insurrection against the educational system of America failed, and
all I wanted was some compensation for my age group, not a complete destructive
revolution where the people of the new end up being exactly like the people of
the old. It was an insurrection of which I was able to gain no followers,
fellow leaders (I wasn’t offering that really), and pretty much no momentum
whatsoever. I’m not to blame for that,
and I don’t care what my ghostwriter thinks or tells me otherwise. The ghost just takes one thing from my life,
a little moment, one sexual mistake which involved a hairy nipple, a mistake of
which I really wish I could ask my ghost writer, “Could we never, ever bring
this up again?” This one mistake
supposedly ruined my whole insurrection.
It ruined me, my ideals, my plan, my thoughts, just as they (ideals,
plan, thoughts) and I were about to collide, but I don’t believe that. I believe my only mistake was in hiring this
ghostwriter who now has an obsession with my hairy nipple incident that I told
him about.
I had a justifiable insurrection going on before I fled the idea all
together, and my insurrection inspiration got its starting blocks early in my
life. Ever since I could remember in my
educational career, either right when I got to the school, or was just about to
leave and go to another school, construction was started on the school to
improve it. Construction that would be
completed right when I left or a year after.
It was like “they” were shoving it in my face, saying, “Na-na-na-na,
this school is going to be nice, clean and new, but just not while you’re
here.” It had been that way for my age
group since elementary school, and continued into middle school, high school, and
even some in college. It was as if I
were in some guinea pig age bracket, the last group to be fashioned in the
environment of the old schools, and as soon as my friends (my age group) and I
left, “they” could start fashioning the new modern ages, in the new modern
schools.
Who “they” is? I’ve got no idea, and I think that was a big problem in
losing credibility in my insurrection.
I don’t know what “they” expected to happen, other than an
insurrection. Just leaving my age group
out there like a floating fart in the wind.
Making us the new Lost Generation (or Lost Generation Redux), with a
fart in the wind war that didn’t seem like it was going to end, even in
twenty-ten.