I have no time for reading. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. If I pick up a book to read purely for pleasure, the annoyingly studious part of me nags that I should grab Great Expectations or L’Inferno for my classes instead. (Where is that voice when I’m watching Law and Order: SVU at 2:00 in the morning?) I’m all for the wonders of Dickens and Dante, but their brilliance can be mentally taxing in excess.
The opportunity to read and review Antony John’s Five Flavors of Dumb in preparation for his Literatures in English Department-sponsored visit Monday (2/21) was therefore too fabulous to pass up – I could indulge in young adult fiction and trick my inner scholar that it was for journalism’s sake.
Five Flavors of Dumb follows a motley teenage garage band turned small-time Seattle sensation under the guidance of an unlikely manager, severely deaf chess whizz Piper Vaughn. It was initially jarring to settle back into the rather ridiculous world of high school when I so happily vacated it just last spring; this version of it is familiarly strewn with egotistical guitarists, “supermodel wannabes” and a bothersome little brother, but it is spiced with the perspective of sarcastic, college-bound Piper, who half-hears the world through (uncool) Barbie-pink hearing aids.
Piper offers Dumb, the aptly-named rock band who blow up their amps on the high school steps, some much-needed managerial guidance when they solicit her to get them paying gigs. Front man Josh is a typical blue-eyed beauty who’s in love with himself; Kallie is an unattainable glamour girl with whom Josh is smitten, for which reason she is somehow wriggled into the group despite having next to no guitar-playing skills; the brooding black-haired bassist is Josh’s brother, Will; Tash is an untouchable goth girl on lead guitar with too much attitude; and Piper’s good friend, Ed, a talented percussionist whom she frequently whoops at chess, accidentally ends up the drummer.
Extrapolating the inner-workings of this painfully mismatched group is a good outlet for Piper, whose parents have just siphoned her college fund money into cochlear implants for her otherwise profoundly deaf baby sister. Piper’s family is the endearingly dysfunctional, i.e. relatable, kind: a mother who works too hard and a father who resents that he can’t work at all are baby-crazy parents, leaving little time for Piper and her brother, Finn, a suave, troublemaking freshman.
Embarking on Dumb’s zany quest for music-made cash all over Seattle is enjoyable in a very effortless way. The book is a quick read, especially compared to college material, and it is, of course, written for a younger audience. To give fair warning, a brain that’s been hardwired to dissect language and pull references from every page would initially be perplexed by the simple similes and the sentences that actually say what they mean. It took me quite a few chapters to sidle back into a younger teen’s mindset.
With its simplicity, when one is engrossed enough to appreciate it, the Five Flavors of Dumb – the fond way Piper refers to each of the distinct personalities in the band – offers a refreshing splash of realism often lacking in similar works.
Piper’s disability could have been a bland, uncomfortable basis for plot in a suffocating adherence to political correctness, but throughout the book Piper’s deafness is oftentimes apparent only when she is cleverly using it to her advantage, or lamenting that her parents “perfected” her baby sister without considering that deafness needn’t be something to correct. Piper’s disagreements with her parents, and her need for them to see her as an individual instead of slightly damaged goods, are the markings of many a childhood; this inimitable family in a relatable context is arguably the novel’s biggest triumph, alongside portraying severe hearing loss as a culture to be celebrated instead of an error to be fixed.
Piper’s unorthodox music education inspired by strange messages on the internet is another highlight, taking her and various members of the band on rock-legend goose chases around Seattle. Through squabbles, missteps and some all-out catastrophes, Dumb’s fragile ties manage to hold, its participants and manager motivated by either money or glory. Momentary immersions in musical history, however, enlighten the disorganized crew about music’s power to be felt as well as heard. Just like the don’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover realizations – the goth girl has a heart, the glam girl has a soul – these scenes can border on trite, but more often than not they’re the feel-good sweet you’d want from a book like this.
You can hear an excerpt read by the author at 4:00 PM on Monday in the Chu room, followed by a Q&A and discussion with writer-in-residence Blanche Boyd.
Recommendation: turn off the computer and pick up a pleasure read. Spoil yourself with young adult fiction. It seems drastic, I know, but books just for books’ sake are good for a midterm-crazed psyche. Five Flavors of Dumb, while written in a much younger and simpler voice than most of the books on my desk, is as funny as it is a poignant and revitalizing read. •
