Election
A brilliantly funny novel from the author of ‘The Abstinence Teacher’ and ‘Little Children’, made into an acclaimed film starring Reece Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick.Tracy Flick wants to be president of Winwood High. She’s one of those ambitious girls who finds time to do it all: edit the yearbook, star in the school musical, sleep with her English teacher. Staunch idealist, Jim McAllister (aka ‘Mr M’) thinks the students deserve better. So he persuades Paul Warren – a well-liked, good-hearted jock – to run as well. But that puts Paul’s sister, Tammy, in a snit. So she runs too, on an apathy platform – before starting a real campaign…to get herself kicked out of school.The idea was to educate the students of this suburban New Jersey school in the democratic process and the American way. But with all the sex scandals, smear campaigns and behind-the-scenes powerbrokers at Winwood High, it doesn’t look as if they need any lessons…
Читать Election онлайн беплатно
TOM PERROTTA
Election
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This Harper Perennial edition published 2009
First published in the USA in hardback by G. P. Putnam's Sons (1998).
First published in paperback in the USA by Berkley (1998).
Copyright © Tom Perrotta 1998
Tom Perrotta asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007262403
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2009 ISBN: 9780007319411 Version: 2017-01-05
‘Election provides those gratifyingly exact and telling portraits of the kids themselves. Solid plotting guarantees that the reader really does want to learn who wins when the ballots are finally counted’
New York Times
‘A neatly written, nimble-witted novel. A good-natured, John Irvingesque portrait of the contemporary world … Seamless storytelling’
Washington Post
for my brother and sister
“The teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life. I believe that every teacher should recognize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.”
—JOHN DEWEY
“The world is the School gone mad.”
—WILLIAM TREVOR
Table of Contents
MR. M.
ALL I EVER WANTED to do was teach. I never had to struggle like other people with the question of what to do with my life. My only dream was to sit on the edge of my desk in front of a room full of curious kids and talk about the world.
The election that turned me into a car salesman took place in the spring of 1992, when Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill were still fresh in everyone's mind, and Gennifer Flowers was the momentary star of tabloids and talk shows. All year long my junior Current Events class returned again and again to a single theme, what the media liked to call “the Character Issue”: How are private virtue and public responsibility intertwined? Can you be an adulterer and a good President? A sexual pervert and an effective, impartial member of the judiciary?
It's fair to say that these questions interested me more than my students. Like most American adolescents, the kids at Winwood High didn't pay too much attention to the Supreme Court or the race for the White House. Their concerns were narrower—school, sports, sex, the unforgiving politics of the hallway and locker room.
But we also had the Glen Ridge rape case to discuss. My students were fascinated by this sad and sordid story, and it became the nexus where their concerns linked up with those of the larger democracy. The case had not yet gone to trial at that point, but the kids at Winwood knew the details inside and out. A group of high school athletes—the golden boys of Glen Ridge—had been charged with luring a retarded girl into a basement, forcing her to commit a variety of sexual acts, and then penetrating her vagina with a broomstick and a baseball bat. None of the defendants denied the event had occurred. Their defense was that the girl had consented.
We had developmentally disabled kids at Winwood, and we had football heroes, too; the gap between them was immense, almost medieval. It wasn't too hard to imagine how a lonely, mildly retarded girl might consider it a privilege of sorts to be molested and applauded by the jock royalty of her little world. They were the ones with the power of conferring recognition and acceptance. If they saw you, you existed.
Given the similarities between Winwood and Glen Ridge—we were only separated by a couple of exits on the Parkway—it didn't really surprise me that the overwhelming majority of my class, girls included, sided with the defendants and their right to a good time. If a girl, even a retarded girl, was dumb enough to join a troop of red-blooded boys in a basement, then who could blame the boys for taking advantage of this windfall?
