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Overview
In Teen Angst! Naaah . . . Ned Vizzini offers an authentic and raw portrayal of the crushing anxiety many teens experience, and which often is dismissed as simple ‘angst’. In this classic testament to high school, Ned invites you into his world of school, parents, cool (and almost cool), music (the good and bad), friends, fame, camp, sex (sort of), Cancún (almost), prom, beer, video games, and more. With wit, irony, and honesty, Vizzini presents the weird, funny, and sometimes mortifying moments that made up his teen years. From the author of Broadway musical sensation Be More Chill and It's Kind of a Funny Story, this is a quasi-autobiographical examination of one high schooler’s battle with social anxiety, written when the author was just nineteen.
“Fiercely intelligent and introspective . . . Insightful, and thoroughly charming.” —SLJ
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780307815545 |
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Publisher: | Random House Children's Books |
Publication date: | 02/29/2012 |
Sold by: | Random House |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 272 |
Sales rank: | 1,012,780 |
File size: | 2 MB |
Age Range: | 12 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Ned Vizzini wrote Teen Angst? Naaah . . ., a memoir of his teenage years; Be More Chill, which has been turned into a Broadway play; It’s Kind of a Funny Story, made into a motion picture; and The Other Normals.
Read an Excerpt
Introduction
I started writing this book because of my backpack. I took a bright teal, super-dorky backpack to high school, a backpack my mother had ordered years earlier from L.L. Bean. It worked so great throughout junior high that I figured it had a year or two left in it.
My backpack got some looks. People would stare at it, wondering, "What kind of idiot wears an accessory like that?" Then they would see me. "Oh."
One day, I was going down one of my high school's escalators. I was tired. I took off my backpack and put it next to me on an escalator step. For whatever reason, the backpack flipped over and started rolling down like a Slinky.
Many steps below stood a girl. She had one hand to her face, as if she were on a cell phone, but she had no actual phone. We were the only people on the escalator. The backpack kept tumbling (I watched it sort of helplessly) and whapped her in the back of the calves.
The girl stopped talking on her fake phone and turned to look at me. She had to take that look: I could've been a cute guy who'd flung my backpack at her to break the ice. She sized me up, cocked her head, and kicked my backpack as hard as she could the rest of the way down.
When I reached the bottom, I picked up my backpack and thought about it for the rest of the day. On the subway ride home, I pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper and wrote about the cell-phone girl and my stupid bag. I wrote angrily; I used a lot of curses. Afterward, I felt a lot better, and when I read my words the next day, I thought theywere pretty good.
So I went from writing profanity-ridden rants to slightly less profanity-ridden essays. I was able to get some of them published in a local newspaper, New York Press. Soon I was writing on a regular basis, taking my boring, scary, embarrassing high school moments and turning them into something people could read about. It was a real comfortif something weird or horrible happened to me, I'd write about it, and then somehow I'd be in control. A little.
In 1998, I got a piece published in The New York Times Magazine. That got me in touch with Free Spirit Publishing, who gave me this book contract, which I signed, and now somehow I'm here, writing this introduction after polishing most of what I wrote in high school and organizing it chronologically.
I threw out that backpack when I was a junior and replaced it with a bag from the army surplus store.
I never did learn the name of the girl.
Ned Vizzini
Brooklyn, New York
My school had seven sets of escalators. It was a high school specializing in math and science, so I guess they figured we deserved escalators.
If you want to write to me about my book, you can reach me at Free Spirit Publishing Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 616 Minneapolis, MN 55401-1724. Or email me at: help4kids@ freespirit.com
Table of Contents
Introduction | 1 | |
Junior High | 5 | |
Nintendo Saved Me | 6 | |
The Test | 14 | |
Highway to Hell | 21 | |
Are We Alternative Now? | 29 | |
Freshman Year | 35 | |
Stuy High | 36 | |
Fifteen Minutes | 45 | |
Parental Approval | 49 | |
Horrible Mention | 56 | |
Moxy Music | 62 | |
Postmark: Blancheville | 67 | |
Sophomore Year | 75 | |
Cable Access Says No | 76 | |
Roll with It | 83 | |
Here Comes Trouble | 87 | |
No Big Deal | 92 | |
Back Car | 96 | |
Let's Buy Beer | 100 | |
Marathon Macho | 109 | |
Junior Year | 117 | |
Magic Moments | 118 | |
Goofy Foot Forward | 123 | |
Everybody Loves a Wheelchair | 131 | |
The View | 138 | |
Good-bye, Old Painter | 150 | |
Getting Sloppy with Poppy | 160 | |
MetroCarded | 166 | |
Senior Year | 171 | |
Forced March | 172 | |
Fun in the Sun | 183 | |
Interlude | 199 | |
Prom, Prom, Promises | 202 | |
Hooters | 220 | |
Index | 228 | |
About the Author | 232 |
What People are Saying About This
This kid can write! Teen Angst? is zany, tender and hysterically funny.
How could a kid this young be this talented? I still don't know the answer. But he writes with a clarity, an honesty, and an unpretentious sense of the absurd that most writers would kill for. The really amazing thing is that beyond the remarkable skill, and beyond his obvious smarts, Ned always remains, to the core, real.
I'm not even particularly fond of kids-more of a dog person-so the fact that I read TEEN ANGST? is shocking enough. The idea that I enjoyed it and want to share it with other people is a testament to Vizzini's honesty, humor, insight, and ability to write in such a way that crosses age, gender, and any other gaps that are out there. Prepare to laugh, reflect, and reminiscence about your own teen years.
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