rachelmanija | Tuned Out, by Maia Wojciechowska

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Tuned Out, by Maia Wojciechowska

Cover copy: In Jim’s revealing journal, which is the substance of this moving book, we share the experience of that terrible summer – the LSD and marijuana, the hippies, the disillusionment, the helpless confusion and fear. It is all recorded frankly, to the final horror of Kevin’s freaking out and the shaky beginnings of his redemption.

The freaking out silhouette is even more detailed and hilarious in real life.

Written in 1968 by a very square author determined to plumb the horrifying depths of drugs she clearly never tried herself, this novel is regrettably only intermittently amusing: one part Reefer Madness to three parts unconvincing teen angst.

Sixteen-year-old Jim idolizes his nineteen-year-old brother Kevin to a rather disturbing degree. This is how the novel opens:

One day I ought to find out how it is with other kids. I don’t think I’m abnormal or anything for sixteen, but I don’t think that there are many guys my age who are still crazy about their older brothers. They might actually love them, but I just don’t think they are crazy about them. […] It’s not that I’m ashamed of it or anything like that, but how do you explain that Kevin is not just a brother to me? Besides being the greatest guy I know, he’s someone I’ve got to have. I mean it’s very important to me to have him.

Fandom! Stop making me go to the bad incest place!

Jim goes on and on and ON about Kevin for the entire rest of the chapter. He offers to be Kevin’s “Boswell” and follows him around writing down everything Kevin says to preserve it for posterity.

He is important.For one thing he never says ordinary, cruddy things. When he speaks he almost always says something really brilliant.

[…]

I really want his opinions on these things so they can become my opinions too.

Then, at the end of an entire chapter of that: I’ve been re-reading these last couple of pages, and I do sound sort of creepy.

Yes. Yes, you do. I’m going to go out on a limb and surmise that the author wrote this entire thing as a first draft and never re-wrote, but rather added in stuff like that as she went along.

Kevin comes home from college, and he’s become a marijuana fiend! He giggles maniacally, flaps his hands, hallucinates evil circles, and demands that Jim smoke pot (“You know. Tea. Grass. Marijuana.”) with him. Jim does so, despite his a Public Service Announcement’s worth of reservations. What follows is certainly the most unique pot high I’ve ever come across in fiction. While Kevin freaks out over the circles, Jim experiences ecstasy, hilarity, and then is visited by a devil who is out to get Kevin’s soul and an angel who urges Jim to save him. The angel-devil-Jim dialogue goes on for pages and pages and pages. Then Jim comes down and pukes his guts out. But lo! The angel is still there! The angel is real! Jim’s soul really is in danger from the Demon Marijuana!

The angel takes off, having convinced Jim that pot is bad. Kevin then hauls Jim out to score LSD, which Kevin has never tried before. They meet naked, dirty hippie chicks in a filthy squat, and nice adults who warn them of the terrors of “freaking out.” Kevin trips and – all together now – “freaks out.” This is disappointingly tame: he thinks the circles are attacking him, breaks a mirror and goes catatonic.

Kevin is taking to a mental hospital, where a nice psychiatrist fixes him up. He and Jim swear off drugs, and Jim resolves to try to get some of his own opinions. ~~And then he goes and gets himself killed in Vietnam~~. The end!

Oh, forgot to mention: No one in the history of humanity has ever taken heroin and not become addicted, and it is impossible to ever get off it. If you take heroin, you are DOOOOMED.

View boggled reviews on Amazon: Tuned out; a novel

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You know, I was only 5 in 1968, but I remember Kevin! I couldn't get over him. I wanted to ask him all sorts of things just so I could know what to think. Further, I wanted to &%(@ his *%#& and $(@$* his %&(%, although that might have something to do with the pot he was forcing me to smoke, it's hard to tell.

By the way, I'm surprised at this review of yours, coming as it is from a post-Reaganite philistine.

Hilarious.

My teenaged daughter recently flipped through Go Ask Alice and said it was similarly unconvincing, dated, and foolish.

And the heroin thing. Why do they do stuff like this--say things that are patently untrue? They really must have forgotten what it's like to be a kid (KIDS ARE NOT STUPID)

Our teacher read us that book! In the FOURTH GRADE. It scared the piss out of me.

Wow! All we got was filmstrips that threatened that if we took LSD, we'd see music and hear colors. (Made me want to rush right out and get my hands on some--not the effect they intended, I'm sure.)

Well, now I want to rush right out and get some!

//DIES OH, how I remember this book. OH MAN. The only worse book I ever read about drugs -- besides Go Ask Alice -- was Angel Dust Blues, which we had to read in junior high as a Cautionary Tale. Ahahahaha.

Do you ever follow Fine Lines at Jezebel? They review old YA stuff all the time, it's awesome.

No! Awesome, I've read nearly everything she reviews. I had no idea anyone but me remembered Nothing's Fair In Fifth Grade.

DUDE, she reviewed Tiger Eyes! Nobody ever talks about Tiger Eyes! And I loved that one, because the NM setting was so well-done.

Cuando los lagartijos corren, Moi!

That is seriously one of the few novels I've seen that captures what it's like to live in NM, not a damned tourist commercial (Red Sky at Morning is so dated and skanky it almost doesn't count, altho I loved it growing up).

No one in the history of humanity has ever taken heroin and not become addicted

I read a really creepy thriller once (when I was very short of reading matter) in which there was a subsidiary character who was a jazz pianist who had become addicted to heroin after somebody covertly slipped him some one time at a party* (you know, in that naive manner of jazz musicians). Our hero took him in, because of some plot convolution I totally forget, and in the process helped him go cold turkey and get clean. This hurt/comfort motif, combined with the general misogyny - the two main female characters were sisters, one was a slut who had Betrayed the hero and his love for her, the other was her uptight spinster sister who turned out to be both secretly in love with the hero and a psychopathic murderess - made me to go hmmmmm even before I'd heard of slash. Anyway, the jazz musician was An Innocent Victim.

*This is the 'they put sherry in the trifle at the kiddies' party and now I am a hopeless alcoholic' defence.

...omfg I so need to read this now, YOUR FAULT.

I can't remember either the author or the title - it was in some omnibus volume from something like the Thriller Bookclub - the other two books were a Desmond Cory and a John D MacDonald but I've tried to trace the volume with that information without success.

It was really, really, bad. Esp by comparison with the other two, since Cory and MacDonald could both write a nifty thriller with plausible characters in prose that does not set one's teeth on edge.

I don't think you should blame fandom for making you go to the bad incest place. Clearly Jim wants to go there himself.

Holy moly! Even the very best Maui Wowee didn't furnish a mega-high like that!

the author wrote this entire thing as a first draft and never re-wrote

For FIVE DOLLARS.

I am disappointed to find no Amazon reviews!

I thought there were some, but I seem to have copied the wrong link, and now I can't find them. Dammit.

Dude! It's DUELING REVIEWERS!

http://www.amazon.com/Tuned-out-novel-maia-wojoiechowska/product-reviews/B000GT5EUQ/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

ALSO:

Holy shit! That's even better than my cover! It's the agonized hands that make it, I think, even more than the 2 or the pornstache.

I assume ~~Dean~~ KEVIN is the one with the fake little Lennon tinted glasses.

But the pornstache, Rachel! Sweet Jesus, the pornstache!

Besides being the greatest guy I know, he’s someone I’ve got to have. I mean it’s very important to me to have him.

Fandom! Stop making me go to the bad incest place!

Hate to tell you, but it's not fandom making you go there. Sounds like Jim's painting up a psychedelic VW bus to drive you himself.

Although, this:

While Kevin freaks out over the circles, Jim experiences ecstasy, hilarity, and then is visited by a devil who is out to get Kevin’s soul and an angel who urges Jim to save him. The angel-devil-Jim dialogue goes on for pages and pages and pages. Then Jim comes down and pukes his guts out. But lo! The angel is still there! The angel is real! Jim’s soul really is in danger from the Demon Marijuana!

sounds like either the worst SPN AU ever or the MOST AWESOME SPN AU ever. Either way, it'd make a hell of an ff.net summary.

I am now tempted to search and replace on that chapter and paste to the Pit of Voles to see if anyone would notice! Um. I guess that would be plagiarism, huh?

I guess that would be plagiarism, huh?

Oh, just throw in a line about ~~Jim's~~Dean's soulful green eyes and make sure to change the ages. That's totally enough differences for the Pit!

I was nearly asleep when the devil spoke again.

"Sam's mind already belongs to us."

I shouted, "Take my soul and leave Sam alone!"

The moment I said this I knew that Sam was saved.

See? And you even did it without the gratuitous misogyny.

...Oh, wait, that's not a proper ff.net comment, is it?

::clears throat::

OMGRACHEL U H0R!!!111! U CANT LEAVE IT THERE MY POOR DEEEEEEEEN!!!1!!1 Sam so doesn't deserve a borther that AWSUM!1111!!

I think I broke my keyboard doing that.

....hell, I bet that IS an upcoming SPN episode. Only with evil-women-demon-blood, instead of ganja.

hell, I bet that IS an upcoming SPN episode

Nah. It's a total rerun.

Someone NEEDS to mock me up a cover with SamnDean on it as the bros after the travesty I just ~~inflicted on Rache's comments~~ saw.

Actually, I could swear I've seen the actors in that exact pose, though it was Dean's actor doing the "I'm not with him, really" hands and Sam's actor flashing the pornstache.

//totally cracks up

....did you ever see that UTU footage of when Castiel!actpr signs an autograph at a con on Sam!actor's back and the crowd GOES APESHIT and Dean!actor can't even look at any of them, he just kind of crumples onto a little heap on a stool with his face in his hands obviously thinking 'Why, why was I born in the age of the internet?' It's kinda awesome.

Oh, yeah, that footage was everywhere in fandom. *G* Apparently, Castiel's actor is the Viggo brand of fruitcake, and while that's taken some of the attention away from Dean's actor, who is clearly not so comfortable in front of a camera without a script, it also seems to just encourage Sam's actor, who is himself not the most, uh, restrained individual around. The show may aggravate me, but the behind the scenes hijinks are comedy gold.

the Viggo brand of fruitcake,

//dies

and while that's taken some of the attention away from Dean's actor, who is clearly not so comfortable in front of a camera without a script, it also seems to just encourage Sam's actor, who is himself not the most, uh, restrained individual around

I want them to make out in front of a camera someday, so fandom will turn into THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER freaking out over how Castiel!actor stole Sam from Dean.

Oh, you missed it. After that clip, fandom was totally freaking out over how Castiel!actor stole Sam!actor from Dean!actor! Apparently Deanguy was facepalming forever not because he was surrounded by muppets, see, but because he was trying to hide his tragic heartbreak about his sekrit gay lover being fake humped by the other dude.

No, for serious.

because he was trying to hide his tragic heartbreak about his sekrit gay lover being fake humped by the other dude

REALLY?

OH, *FANDOM.*

Really, really. And then there were those of us predicting that Jensen was going to demand hazard pay next time he had to do a con with either of them.

....I'm over here laughing so hard I can't even fucking allcaps anymore. Ohhh Jesus.

I know! Oh fandom, I don't know why ILU so but it makes me kind of uncomfortable that I feel like I belong here.

Well, you know. It's fandom.

Sadly, I can totally verify this.

DID IT MAKE FANDOM_WANK OMG

Oh, probably. I just heard about it via recaps and choice quotes from my fellow smartasses.

//dies

I know my brands of fruitcake, yo. And I didn't just mention Viggo at random; all those LotRiPS tinhats now live in this neighborhood.

I want them to make out in front of a camera someday, so fandom will turn into THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER freaking out over how Castiel!actor stole Sam from Dean.

Well, they have to finish freaking out about Dean!actor's engagement first. It's a good time to be a fan, if you pronounce fan, "Schadenfreude."

Well, they have to finish freaking out about Dean!actor's engagement first

//face in hands

Man, CW should buy her a fucking flak jacket.

Is this the part where I get to tell you about the fan who loudly asked a security guard to make her leave because she was sitting behind Dean!actor at a signing and was totally RUININGTHEFANSFANTASYOMG? Flak jacket, nothing. Get that woman a grenade launcher.

she was sitting behind Dean!actor at a signing and was totally RUININGTHEFANSFANTASYOMG? Flak jacket, nothing

//FACE IN HANDS

My work here is done.

Also, in this context, there is simply no way for me not to read that as "Large Hardon Collider."

At least while you have a large hardon,you can't pee in the shower.

...yeeeeeah, I like to think I give LJ a touch of class. *buffs nails*

As anyone would do, I feel.

Beat me to it.

Clearly someone needs to nominate this book for Yuletide next year.

DUDE, APPARENTLY SHE FOUGHT BULLS AND IMPRESSED HEMINGWAY.

http://www.lib.usm.edu/~degrum/html/research/findaids/wojciech.htm#bio

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/21/arts/maia-wojciechowska-74-author-of-children-s-books.html

Now I totally have to rip through all my Hemingway bios and see if she's mentioned in any....

Maia Teresa Wojciechowska was born August 7, 1927 in Warsaw, Poland to Zofia and Zygmunt Wojciechowski, a war-time chief of staff for the Polish Air Force. She attended schools in Poland, France, and England, developing an intense dislike for formal education. With the outbreak of World War II, her family moved westward with a string of refugees, ending up in France. They were overtaken by the Germans a year later. Due to her dislike of the French and her refusal to speak the language, Wojciechowska attended as many as seventeen schools in one year. She had a rebellious nature that has remained with her throughout her life and greatly influenced her writing. At eighteen she claims to have held a record seventy-two jobs and held a variety more in the course of her life, including undercover detective, restaurant hostess, masseuse, professional tennis player and instructor, ghost writer, and translator for Radio Free Europe.

In 1942, the Wojciechowskis moved to California. She attended Immaculate Heart College in Hollywood and continued to work at various jobs, including as a copygirl for Newsweek in 1956, assistant editor of RWDSU Record (labor newspaper) in 1957, assistant editor of American Hairdresser

OUT WITH FROGGIES

It's like with Esther Hautzig (author of the Endless Steppe -- she just died, did you see her obit in the Times?) who came to the US and wrote stuff like 'Let's Cook Without Cooking' and '101 Gifts For Under $1.' AMERICAN HAIRDRESSER.

Also, WTF were the Newbery people SMOKING

Manolo was only three when his father, the great bullfighter Juan Olivar, died. But Juan is never far from Manolo's consciousness -- how could he be, with the entire town of Arcangel waiting for the day Manolo will fulfill his father's legacy?

But Manolo has a secret he dares to share with no one -- he is a coward, without afición, the love of the sport that enables a bullfighter to rise above his fear and face a raging bull. As the day when he must enter the ring approaches, Manolo finds himself questioning which requires more courage: to follow in his father's legendary footsteps or to pursue his own destiny?

Maia Wojciechowska's family fled Poland during World War II and emigrated to the United States after the war. She worked as an undercover detective, a motorcycle racer, a translator for Radio Free Europe, and a bullfighter before turning to writing. She was a friend of Ernest Hemingway, who said she knew more about bullfighting than any other woman.

Oh Ernest, WHY SUCH A DOUCHE.

Do you go around asking the ocean why it is so wet? The sun why it must burn? THE MAN MUST BE TRUE TO HIS NATURE.

WHICH IS THAT OF A DOUCHE.

I KNOW. IT'S JUST DOUCHEY EVEN FOR ERNEST, WHICH IS BOGGLING. 'This woman knows more of the art of standing pissing up than any other woman alive!'

They are still making kids read this book! From a review on Amazon:

My favorite part of the book was when the doctor was showing Manolo the gore wound from a bull. It was very descriptive and explained very well how the wound looked.

Jesus God once something gets a Newbury it just STAYS IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM FOREVER, doesn't it.

Hahahah! I remember seeing this book in the Newbury display section at school.

But how does a woman who races motorcycles and fights bulls decide to write a story warning kids about the dangers of "freaking out"?

Srsly, NEWBURY = IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM FOREVER. Now I wonder who the hell judges those things anyway. By what criteria? Is it a panel? Who gets to sit on it if so? &c &c....

But how does a woman who races motorcycles and fights bulls decide to write a story warning kids about the dangers of "freaking out"?

That is the real question. It sounds like from Rachel's description and my own memories that this story was FAR, FAR REMOVED from the author's experience and she got it so terribly wrong it's just ludicrously funny. And if she was born in 1927 and it was published in 1968 that's quite a generation gap there already....

I didn't see anything at all in those archives listings about Tuned Out. WTF. BUT. I give you this:

The collection holds some correspondence relating to a filmstrip, "Stoned". ....Correspondence and royalty statements, 1980-1994, 7 items.

A FILMSTRIP. I would LOVE to see this. ....apparently she also wrote an 'adult' novel about Ernest, which I'd be interested in reading to see whether or not she bought into the myth or called him on his bullshit....then again looking through some of the titles of her proposed nonfiction articles ("Oliver Stone as Artist/Victim/Perverter", "An Open Letter to Madonna on Parenting") she seems a little, uh.

She's out there!

The filmstrip: maybe I saw it (http://rachelmanija.livejournal.com/789400.html?thread=9160600#t9160600)

If so, smooth moves, Maia: thanks to you I had a 20 -year craving to try LSD.

My guess? $$$$.

There's lots more where that came from. A few choice nuggets:

"The Personal Affairs Series documents her many disagreements with and lawsuits against doctors, businesses, and law enforcement agencies."

"Also included in the published works is the play, 'A Mad Tea Party' (1986). The play was adapted from the Lewis Carroll book and apparently was produced by a school or other children's group."

And then in one of the Theatrical Works sections there is
"'Through the Looking Glass with Alice' book by Maia Wojciechoska, music and lyrics by students."

(I have a sudden, urgent desire never to read or see these.)

In Articles and Essays, we find "Editors and Agents Are Not Only Human They Tend To Be Real Jerks and Imbeciles."

!!!!!!

Can you imagine her on LJ? She'd be hitting fandom wank every week.

The mind boggles.

I gather from other entries on that page that she was convinced she was being censored because she was Catholic; based on reasonable inferences I gather she was a very right-wing Catholic.

So: a far-right Catholic convinced people are out to get her, who also has it in for editors and agents and is apparently highly litigious. Hours of amusement!

DUDE, APPARENTLY SHE FOUGHT BULLS AND IMPRESSED HEMINGWAY.

Yeah, but was she high when she did these things? More importantly, was Hemingway high?

SADLY I CAN FIND NO EVIDENCE OF HEMINGWAY SMOKING THE GANJA, he just loved those, God, what were they, awful awful daquiri crap Papa Dobles with rum and grapefruit juice and Maraschino liquer omg gagghghghghg AND he loved absinthe + champagne, apparently. THAT might make you see angels and devils....

THAT might make you see angels and devils....

...And little green ~~fairies~~ aliens. Dude really was pickled, weren't he?

....a DRINKING SEMINAR!

http://www.nola.com/drink/index.ssf/2009/11/drink_like_ernest_hemingway_to.html

It totally beats me why any fool would want to drink like this, tho:

http://www.esquire.com/drinks/ernest-hemingway-drink-recipe

Moi, I may never stop laughing now. But the sad truth is I would totally drink that at least once. I am frighteningly neophilic.

It just, it just....champagne + absinthe? Wouldn't that be green fizzy shit? //shudders

Well, see, I have no idea! Hence the curiosity!

See, the idea of absinthe + champagne makes me actually GLAD I accepted that offer of a Heineken Lite one sunny afternoon my freshman year and was immediately turned into an alcoholic, so I can say, 'ALAS, WOEZ, I HAD ONE TOO MANY BARTLES & JAYMES WINE COOLERS* AND THE PLEASURE OF GREEN FIZZY SHIT ARE DENIED TO ME, I WILL BE OVER HERE AS AN OBJECT LESSON BITING THE CELERY STICK FROM MY VIRGIN MARY IN HALF, THE BONE-DRY SKELETON AT THE FEAST.' //chomp

-- OMG, this all reminds me of a series of books

rachelmanija might like -- about Innocent Young Teens who went to the Big City, where they did things like smoke a joint or drink a beer and then were IMMEDIATELY TURNED INTO HOOKERS AND THIEVES OMFG, only they were then rescued by Jesus Freak people who were painfully hip and it was only on like the last two pages you found out they were really into Jesus and what a cool cat Jesus was and if you got on Jesus' groovy trip too you would realize DRUGS WERE NO HIGH AT ALL, and now these young formerly lost people were writing down their message so you would know it too (oh man the painfully contrived YA narrative framing devices of yesteryear....). There was like a series of them. I saw one at the old Twice Sold Tales location last year and stupidly did not buy it.

*Girls I knew actually drank these and, when I said, "But you have to have like six of them to get a _buzz_ on!" informed me no, that was kind of the point.

I feel you have stumbled upon the sekrit!fuel of the Castiel!actor/Sam!actor revolution.

GREEN FIZZY SHIT FOR ALL, VIVA LA REVOLUCION

Only if we get Ewan on our side.

It's better than that Hemingway rifle they brought out.

This comment thread killed me. I actually needed to get up to go to the bathroom, but stayed at the computer reading past my physical comfort level b/c I couldn't stand to tear myself away.

I was reading through your latest reviews in funny-blog order. So I got through this business of freaking out and becoming terrified of circles, and then the next post started:

"...her boyfriend is not too bright and drinks a lot, and she fears geometry..."

Well no *kidding*. Those circles are *dangerous*.

(I had to give the semantics a serious wedgie before they shut up and started meaning what you meant them to mean.)

I wonder if Kevin had beautiful hands, like Seymour Glass.

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Tuned Out, by Maia Wojciechowska

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Post comments or I won't write any more of this!

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Good God! Bolding mine

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What celebrates the legacy of a suicidal alcoholic depressive like....

Re: What celebrates the legacy of a suicidal alcoholic depressive like....

Re: What celebrates the legacy of a suicidal alcoholic depressive like....

Re: What celebrates the legacy of a suicidal alcoholic depressive like....

Re: What celebrates the legacy of a suicidal alcoholic depressive like....

Re: What celebrates the legacy of a suicidal alcoholic depressive like....

Re: What celebrates the legacy of a suicidal alcoholic depressive like....

Re: What celebrates the legacy of a suicidal alcoholic depressive like....