"And in that moment I swear we were infinite"--Stephen Chobosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I first read Stephen Chobosky's The Perks Of Being a Wallflower at a very central time in my life--high school. I can't even remember how I found it--perhaps it was the bright neon yellow/green cover, which said so much and yet so little.

I do remember devouring the book. It was set up as an epistolary (something I found out later as a Lit major in college), which basically meant a novel based on written letters. In this case, this letters were to a "friend." The book centers around a young boy named Charlie who enters high school in the early 90s. There is a certain anonymity as you read the book, because you are never told anything concrete about the characters--where they live, for example. Charlie's letters are filled with so much--humor, anger, uncertainty with life. He also writes about narrating the vortex of suck known as high school, and the world within trying to find yourself.

I feel like I am doing a disservice to simply summarize the book. Like I said, the plot sounds so simple, but the feelings that resonated within me as I read it are still with me to this day. Perhaps it is because I could relate to Charlie in many ways, going to midnight showings of Rocky Horror and trying to make that perfect mixed tape for someone. As I read the book, I wanted to read the books Charlie read and listen to the music he listen too.

But really, for me, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Chbosky hit on that inner isolation and fear that we all have as high schoolers, as inbetweeners, we were certainly not children, but we were not adults either, and as Angela Chase so famously said once on My So Called Life: "High School is a battlefield for your heart"

One of my favourite passages from the book directly relates to the quote I posted: "And in that moment I swear we were infinite." In this passage from the book Charlie and his friends Sam and Patrick are riding around listening to music and find that one song that just makes it all come together. We've all had that feeling, haven't we? After all, that's the essence of this assignment--to remember memories as we associate them with medias in our life. For me and The Perks, my moment of "infiniteness" came my freshman year of college when I finally heard the Smith's song "Asleep," which has a special significance in the novel. I had been searching for the song for years, and to finally hear it brought tears to my eyes...it still does.

Every once and while, I re-read The Perks of Being a Wallflower. And I can safely say that as book comfort food, I still read and understand something new every time, or gain a different perspective being much older than I was the first time I read it.