Welcome everybody to another Wednesday Night Book Club.
I'm your host, Andy Rice.
Thanks for joining me in my apartment here.
It's weird.
I have so many people in here.
I know seating is difficult.
I only have a couple couches.
I hope you all brought your novels.
This week we're talking about We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier.
This is the second Robert Cormier book.
I guess the third technically because I did two last week.
In a row I won't do any more from him in the foreseeable future.
We're moving on.
Different authors.
Actually, no, not different authors because next week, spoiler, it's the sequel to Lovecraft
Country.
So this whole first, we'll call it first season of Wednesday Night Book Club is kind of a
mess.
Thanks for sticking with me.
I'm going to try to keep these shorter.
I know that an hour was a little bit too long last time.
So and again, the comments, it's getting out of hand people.
Audiobooks have as much merit as the written form of a novel.
You know, if there was a blind person and he decided to do a book club, I don't think
there'd be a single person in that room that would criticize him for listening to an audiobook
or her.
And so, I don't know, I mean, just because I'm capable of reading with my eyes doesn't
mean that audio is in any way less of an accomplishment of reading a book.
If you consider reading a book an accomplishment, which I do, because in my mind, there's a
nice little like just tally.
Every time I add a book to like the hundreds of books I've read, it's just like a cool
little feather in the cap.
And I try to get people that I know that don't read to read constantly.
I work with some young people and they are not readers.
This new generation of kids coming out do not actively go and find a novel that they
want to just consume real quick because of the story or whatever.
We all know what's up.
It's TikTok and it's YouTube or whatever.
But I try to tailor a book selection for whoever I'm trying to convince.
So I work with one young girl who she loves, Princess Bride.
So I'm thinking, OK, we'll do as you wish the Carrie Elwes autobiography, which is wonderful.
And especially if you're a fan of the movie or I was going to suggest reading Princess
Bride, the book.
But I don't know, that might be a little too stiff for a first one.
I got Midnight, the Midnight Library by Matt something, I think.
I might be wrong about the author.
I'm not going to look it up, but the Midnight Library is one of the best novels I've ever
read.
And that one is if you're looking to recommend a book for someone, that's a great one to
start with.
It covers so many existential kind of questions.
The basic plot is just it's a girl, a young woman who is about to kill herself.
And right before she dies, she enters the Midnight Library, which allows her to take
a book off the shelf and live a life from that age that she was just like continuing
from that moment onwards.
But if she had made different choices in her life, if she had ended up staying with that
one guy who wanted to marry her, if she had decided to pursue being an actress or whatever,
and then she gets to see what the what the outcome was.
And I won't give away anything else, but I truly think that's one of the best books out
there right now.
So please go check that out.
It's the Midnight Library.
God, I should know the freaking author.
Anyway, but that's not what we're talking about today.
We are talking about a weird, a weird short 199 page novel from the early 90s, 1991, be
specific, a young adult novel.
And let's get into it.
It's there's a house and these teenagers break into it and they do some horrendous shit to
this house.
I mean, we're talking literally they should take a shit on the floor.
They break every single thing they could find.
They rip up clothing, they piss on the walls.
They are just savagely trashing this house to like almost a degree I haven't read or
seen in a movie or book.
It's bad.
Like the way he describes it, you feel like that house was violated.
And I never really get that impression.
Like usually like even when someone comes home in a movie and their and their room has
been torn apart by burglars, like they're usually looking for something and they're
just sort of non-disc, they're just, you know, throwing things around to find that that thing.
But in this case, it was just for the malice of it was just literally the intention was
to just cause chaos.
And it was it's gross.
And it's I'm not a fan.
Oh, I mean, of what they did, obviously.
But yeah, it was visceral.
Like as I was listening to it, I was like, oh, this is kind of disgusting.
But things get a little bit worse when one of the occupants of the house comes home and
it unfortunately happens to be 14 year old.
What's her name?
The 14 year old.
I don't know her name.
Doesn't matter.
Karen.
I think it is.
So Karen, she comes home early and they find her and they start to attempt to rape her
and they are getting close to their to their task, but they're interrupted by one of the
other.
I should mention that there's the main character, you could say, quote unquote, he's not my
main character, but I don't get to that, but the main character, according to the author
of the book, would be Buddy Walker.
He's one of the teenagers.
He's upstairs.
He's just done pissing on the walls and the booze are starting to wear down a little bit.
And he looks around and he realizes what he's just done.
And he gets sick and throws up.
So actually the vomit was unintentional.
But yeah, he starts to feel guilty and a little bit of a you find this out later, but his
parents are getting a divorce.
And in a moment of weakness, a man, a boy named Harry Flowers, a very popular boy from
school took advantage of this, took him out, got him drunk.
Now flash forward, you know, a couple of weeks and now they're trashing a house and Buddy
feels awful about it.
So he's up there throwing up.
He hears a scream and he runs downstairs and he sees that the other three teenagers are
attempting to rape this 14 year old girl.
And so he says something.
He says, Hey, what are you guys doing?
He doesn't feel comfortable about this.
It's enough of a reason or like a way for her to get a distraction.
So she starts to run away and Harry Flowers chases her and there's an open door where
she gets the door open and he pushes her and it's a stairway and she falls down and she
ends up in a coma that later on, like she, she ends up in a coma in the hospital.
The boys get away.
The family comes home.
It's the house is ruined.
You know, they, they spend, you know, they get it fixed.
It doesn't feel the same.
It feels violated.
Their sister slash daughter, you know, Karen, she's in the hospital.
It's awful.
The older sister, Jane is wrecked by this and she is questioning kind of everything
about her life.
It's you know, it's really rocked her to her core.
Now there was a witness to this crime and this is where things get, in my opinion, absolutely
fucking bonkers, excited, exciting.
There's someone called the Avenger, an 11 year old kid who is watch who sees what happens
and it's, and it's the, every time you get an Avenger chapter, the kid just calls himself
the Avenger.
He saw what the kid, the teenagers looked like.
He is now tracking them down to take care of them.
And you know, the Avenger means business because how you're introduced to him is he's sitting
in school and he notices that there's a kid named Vaughn who is an asshole to all the
kids.
He's not necessarily a bully to the Avenger himself.
He just sort of pokes the Avenger in the back of the head during class, which is annoying,
but the Avenger is okay.
He can take it.
He's patient and patience is absolutely his strength.
And so he patiently starts following Vaughn home, starts learning his routine, you know,
but he sees the way Vaughn treats other kids and the way that he feels proud about being
a bully and that rubs the Avenger the wrong way.
So one day the Avenger follows Vaughn.
He waits patiently.
He knows that Vaughn typically at this time goes out to the garage to play with his toys.
Vaughn comes out exactly like he said.
The Avenger goes, hey, Vaughn looks up and the Avenger blows off the bottom half of his
face with a fucking revolver.
Another 11 year old kid.
So this is where this might be a bit controversial because when I read that in the book at first
and I didn't get any further into the book, I thought the Avenger was the main hero.
I thought, cool, yeah, awesome.
A kid, you know, took care of a bully.
In hindsight, well, let's let's just table that for a moment.
But yeah, at this point, I'm like, awesome, totally for the Avenger.
This guy's awesome.
Can't wait for to see who else he I can't wait for him to kill these teenagers.
They absolutely fucking deserve it is what is what I'm thinking this whole time.
I guess I completely just disassociated them being children in the and I guess the author
of this book makes you feel like the Avengers doing good work when he kills that other kid.
But like, oh, God, it's 2024.
What a sensitive topic to talk about.
I mean, we have school shootings all the fucking time and it's not a laughing matter.
But there was something about this that just felt different.
I mean, this was pretty calm on when he wrote this.
He wasn't thinking that there was going to be a lot of mass shootings with kids and stuff.
So like this, like when he wrote it, it felt like it feels good.
But when he gets this when this kid gets the when he gets the shot up.
But anyway, later, the police are they interview everyone and they they they don't suspect
him at all because he's he's a good, you know, he's good at acting like he didn't do anything.
But the gun that he stole along to his grandfather and his grandfather is a retired police officer.
And one day after going to the movies and having lunch, just having a great day with
his grandfather, they go back to his grandfather's house or apartment.
It's up like fifth floor, sixth floor.
And they go out to the balcony and the grandfather kind of leaning over the rail turns back to
the Avenger and he goes, hey, there's something I want to ask you.
As he kind of turned away, you know, kind of get himself prepped for the question.
The Avenger, knowing what he's going to ask and knowing that this would ruin everything,
runs up and throws his grandpa off the railing and his grandpa is falling to the floor, like
falling down these flights of stairs.
And the way that Robert Cormier describes the the way that.
The Avenger looks away at the last minute as if it was like a movie.
He's like, and the Avenger looked away at the last second, just like the movies do when
the camera pulls away to spare you from the violent scene.
So he like did that himself, like like the movies.
And I thought that was like a cool description.
So he kills his grandfather and at that point, I'm not I'm not, I guess, pro Avenger, but
I'm not necessarily anti Avenger at this point.
I guess it's when he's on the bus and there's a baby crying next to him and he's thinking
to himself, maybe I should do something about that baby.
That's what I'm like.
Oh, got it.
The Avengers, a bad guy.
And so, fuck.
Yeah, here I am rooting for literally the bad guy.
I guess so.
That was, in my opinion, the most the most engaging part is like learning about the Avenger,
like what he's doing as this 11 year old kid, just fucking killing people.
Then for some reason, I feel like this book could have been another 50 pages easy with
a little bit more of the Avenger hunting down the teenagers because that takes a side like
just a backseat to the rest of the novel, which turns into a believe it or not, fucking
romantic, like a romance novel with Buddy, the kid who threw up on this this house floor.
He feels really guilty about it and he calls Jane, the 16 year old sister, and he says
sorry on the phone, but it doesn't feel like enough.
And he starts to he goes to the mall and he starts kind of stalking her.
Not kind of.
He stalks the fuck out of her.
And in a panicked moment, he runs outside and falls and embarrasses himself.
And she just being like a sweet, good, you know, beautiful girl, like walks over and
she makes up a story about how she tripped once at school and people made fun of her.
So she like knows how it feels and not to worry about it.
And she helps him up.
And they start dating and what makes it that an actual compelling romantic story is because
Buddy doesn't want to meet her family.
He doesn't want to go to her house.
It just reminds him of the awful fucking shit that he's done.
What complicates thing is is Harry Flowers, the main kid who sort of spearheaded this
whole thing.
He admits to the crime and does not rat out his other friends, his dad ends up paying
for all the damage and taking care of it.
They sweep it all under the rug.
But the reason he didn't get in trouble for breaking and entering is because he had a
key to their house.
And the way you find this out is Jane is at home and her father comes home angry.
And he says he turns to her and he says, you gave him a key to the house.
Before he even listens to her side of the story, he accuses her.
And so she storms off.
They have a big argument.
It kind of fragments the family a little bit.
It already fragments the family because of the other daughter being in a coma.
But you find out later that Harry just, she dropped her key at the mall and he picked
it up and he followed her home.
And that's why he didn't want to break any windows while he was in the house.
He's like, don't break whatever you want, just no windows, because that would be breaking
and entering.
So after Harry has been in the newspaper as the one that did it, that adds an extra wrinkle
to Buddy's whole being afraid thing.
Because if Harry, for instance, were to, if Buddy and Jane were out in public and they
ran across Harry Flowers, who she would recognize or at least recognize the name, and he said,
Hey buddy, how are you?
And they knew each other.
Then that would be enough to have Jane ask all the questions that would lead to the inevitable
discovery that he was one of the kids in the house.
Unfortunate.
Well, I mean, we'll get into what's unfortunate for who, but they date, it ends up, they end
up being absolutely in love with each other, but Buddy has a, he's still an alcoholic and
he starts secretly drinking.
He quits a little bit when she finds out, but it's just, it's tough for him.
And they are kind of in a rocky situation when, oh, she's in the, sorry, I forgot to
mention this.
I'm a little bit pregnant.
So when they're in a record store, Buddy and Jane, they're in a record store, they're hanging
out, they're making out with each other.
The Avengers outside, he just happens to be walking by.
He sees her and he goes, Oh, she's so beautiful.
But then he sees one of the trashers, one of the people that trashed the house walk
up and start kissing her.
She likes it.
She starts kissing him with her tongue.
And the kid goes, that's not, that's not good.
A good girl wouldn't be doing that in public.
Wouldn't be doing that with one of these trashers.
That's fucked up.
Maybe she's not a good girl.
She needs to go.
So now he's in his head that he needs to kill her.
So you, she ends up on her way home or something.
She's walking and another little kid, one of these, this pudgy little kid, cause you
don't know the, you don't know the Avengers identity at all.
So this pudgy kid comes up to her and says, Hey Jane, you need to follow me.
Your brother's in trouble.
Her little brother.
And she's like, Oh my God.
So they go and they go to the shack and you're thinking, Oh shit, this kid must be the Avenger.
He's going to do something to her.
The kid ends up leaving and he's like, your kid, your brother's in the shack.
I'm going to go get help or whatever.
He runs off.
She goes to the shack and the door opens up and a middle-aged homeless man who lives on
her street or around her, her area, he ends up putting chloroform in her face and tying
her up.
And you find out that this middle-aged man is the Avenger and all that 11 year old stuff
that he did, he did when he was 11, but that was 30 years ago, 20 years ago.
And he's just fucking insane.
And so he was outside.
You find out that he used to just watch her change and that's why he's always outside
their house.
He's just a creep.
And so when he was on the bus thinking about killing that baby, he's just a homeless guy.
Like thinking about killing her, killing a baby, he's absolutely fucking insane.
He starts telling her that she's a bad girl, that she needs to die.
He's got a knife out.
She's tied up.
She's so scared.
But he un-gags her and they have a moment to talk.
And she makes, I think, a pretty crucial mistake by saying, that other kid, I told him that
if he doesn't see me in 10 minutes, that he needs to go get the police.
And so the Avenger, whose real name is Mickey Looney Stallings, they call him Mickey Looney
because he looks kind of like Mickey Rooney.
If you're unfamiliar with Mickey Rooney, because you're under the age of, what, 50?
I only know him because he was in a Disney Channel original movie.
But Night at the Museum, he's one of the old guards.
That's probably the most recent thing.
But anyway, the Avenger, he goes, oh, well, thanks for telling me that there's only 10
minutes left.
I should make this quick then.
And he starts to immediately go after her and she goes, wait, stop.
You're not a kid.
You're not 11 years old.
You're a middle-aged man.
What are you doing?
He goes, wait, what?
I am a kid.
And she starts getting into his head.
She starts gaslighting him.
Well, not gaslighting him, telling him the truth and un-gaslighting his own brain that
he gaslit himself.
And he ends up killing himself, ends up getting the blade and just starts, cuts his wrist,
both of them, and then stabs himself in the stomach like a samurai and dies.
And right when he's dying, the police bust in and they save her.
And she ends up not calling Buddy because one of the things that the Avenger tells her
while she's tied up is that she's like, I can't believe that you were making out with
one of the guys that trashed your house.
And when she finds out that Buddy is one of the dudes, she breaks up with him.
She does not get back with him.
He is in love with her and still, and he tries everything or he tries a few things to get
back with her.
And he sees her like maybe a few months later and they're at the mall, which he goes to
all the time in hopes of seeing her.
And she blows him off.
And so yet another Robert Cormier novel where nobody fucking wins.
It's all just pessimistic and negative and down and bad.
So well, I mean, not bad, but yeah, nobody wins.
Super sad.
I feel bad for Jane.
I feel bad for Buddy.
I feel bad for even the Avenger because he probably had mental health issues.
I don't feel bad for Harry Flowers.
He seemed like a dick straight up.
I don't feel bad for his other two henchmen either.
They were going to sexually assault some young girl.
By the way, the young girl does come out of the coma and she does regain the ability to
talk and that does add some tension to whether or not, you know, she might recognize Buddy
or whatever.
But she ends up not remembering that night.
So that kind of gets pushed under the rug.
As far as this book goes, reception wise, it was a doozy, were again, a challenged book.
I wrote a quote down here.
Someone challenged the book in Carver Middle School in Leesburg, Florida in the year 2000.
And they put, it's not a book for school.
It's everything negative about society like rape, vulgarity, alcohol abuse, murder, and
how to cover it up.
Yeah, I mean, he's not wrong.
I wouldn't necessarily say that fourth graders should be reading this.
But then this is the kind of book that if I had read in like fifth or sixth grade, I
would have gotten maybe a more, it would have matured me a little bit faster in a good way.
You know, like I would have, like when I read Hatchet in fifth grade, that, I don't know
if that's a fifth grade book or a little bit higher reading or a little bit lower even,
I'm not sure.
I haven't read it in a while.
But that changed me because I was a 10 year old boy reading about probably an 11 year
old boy getting stuck in the Canadian wilderness and having to survive with just a hatchet
against wolves and bears and all sorts of bullshit.
And I thought, man, that's like, it's like those, I don't even know what that guy's name
is, but you know, those old adventure books that got all the men of the boomer and GenX
generations all pumped for war and shit.
Like I felt like as a 10 year old that I was ready to, you know, drop me off in the wilderness
and I could probably go fight bears and shit.
I was ready.
So anyway, I, but that being said, only because of the, only because of that 11 year old blown
off the other 11 year old's head with a revolver.
I think that is not something that I necessarily want to put in the heads of teens or kids
today because of everyone, you know, like it doesn't take much to do a school shooting
and I wouldn't.
So I don't know.
I feel like at the time this came out, dope, like cool book gets people talking.
And I would have liked to have read it when I was younger, but as now in 2024, it's maybe
problematic but I am not one forever, ever, ever banning books of any type for any reason.
I think every, all information should be freely accessible for everybody.
And it's up to you to decide what information that you want to intake and it's up to you
to decide, you know, what you want to believe, what you don't want to believe, what you want
to focus on or not.
So anyway, what I actually think the most vulgar thing in this entire book is there's
a quote from the older sister where she goes, oh yeah, that's Nelson, him and my brother,
they trade Nintendo's.
And I'm thinking that's atrocious.
That's Robert Cormier not understanding what a fucking Nintendo is.
And there's no reason anyone, unless someone is trading, I guess, an SNES for a Game Boy
because they wanted to play Pokemon and the other one wanted to play, you know, Super
Mario Brothers and they didn't have access to either.
But that's this is 1991.
I don't think Pokemon is out or even the Game Boy, to be honest.
When did that Game Boy come out?
What am I doing?
I don't want to hear about this, but I'm going to look up the Game Boy and the Game Boy came
out in 1989.
So absolutely, they might have been trading the Nintendo's.
I don't know.
Did you know that the Game Boy is also known as the DMG01KR mini-combo?
I did not.
And the best selling game was Tetris.
Thank you, Google.
All right.
So that is We All Fall Down.
I thought it was fun read.
I thought the Avenger was an interesting character.
I liked the romance part.
Better love story than Twilight.
And it's engaging.
It's short, quick book.
Like definitely, you know, you get through it in a day on audio and probably just reading.
So yeah.
Oh, it's considered a suspense novel.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Cool.
I'm a big fan.
Well, not a big fan.
But if we're going to do out of five 11 year olds killing other 11 year olds, I'm going
to give it.
I'll give it a three out of five 11 year olds killed.
I got to come up with better rating systems.
I got to just stop basing it on what the books are about.
So next week is the sequel to Lovecraft Country called The Destroyer of Worlds.
I think it's called The Destroyer.
Let me just make sure.
Oh, it's just called Destroyer of Worlds.
No, wait.
I'm so sorry.
I thought this was going to be a better.
Yeah.
The Destroyer of Worlds, a return to Lovecraft Country 2023 just came out last year.
I'm about I'd say 70% through it right now.
I'm trying to read a little bit faster so that it's by Matt Ruff and I'm trying to get
through.
So that way I can have an episode in the bank.
I'm not just doing this week to week because I might maybe tackle some longer books that
but this is another short one.
And so far, 70% through it is awesome.
So we'll get into that next week.
Thank you so much.
Please go to our website, friedricepodcast.com.
That's the main podcast.
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You can tell me what books you want me to listen to.
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And I hope you've enjoyed this.
Please check out our Fried Rice Podcast regular show.
I think the best episode we've done so far is that Battlefield Earth is a masterpiece
joint Scientology.
Today we just started a new season with video.
It should be going up next week or maybe at the end of this week, depending on when you
listen to this.
But anyway, you guys have been a great audience.
Thanks so much for joining me.
Have a great night.