Larry Doyle's High School
I Love You, Beth Cooper's Nerd Love Story
Review of Larry Doyle's new book "I Love You , Beth Cooper," and its nerd love story reminiscent of many teenage sex romp films.
As a book for gauche, geeky high school boys, Larry Doyle's I Love You, Beth Cooper is about perfect, and will be read with utmost interest by real-life versions of its protagonist, Denis Cooverman, unrelenting egghead and valedictorian who uses his graduation speech to express his love to head cheerleader Beth Cooper.
High School Romance
Stories of unreciprocated high school romance never get old, especially among readers, who, by dint of being readers, spent their high school days reading, wowing their attractive crushes in their imaginations only. In reality, they just stare dreamily at the thought of such courtship, before submerging back into another book about unreciprocated high school romance. “Nerd Loves Head Cheerleader—Fiction” might as well be its own genre, its readers levying their own fates on whether the nerd will win or lose the heart of the untouchable bombshell.
It’s a plot that’s equally head-slapping and intriguing, one that, though readers have heard it so, so many times before, may still rush to read again, if for only to recall their bygone halcyon days. Or misrecall: books like I Love You, Beth Cooper, seeing as they are wholly comprised of stereotypes in character, plot, events, and dialogue, actually offer a way to misremember a lousy past as an idyllic one.
Larry Doyle
Larry Doyle has written for The Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead. He’s also written small Shouts and Murmurs for The New Yorker, but none of this makes him a writer. He’s not, not really anyhow, writing only in lazy sass, off-base pop-culture references, and lame puns (“The temperature in the gym reached 125 degrees, qualifying anyone there to be served rare.”). If you’re finding yourself laughing at any point during this book, it’s seriously time to reevaluate your sense of humor. It’s a wonder The Simpsons ended up being so good.
Tiny Triumphs, Massive Failure
Occasionally, Doyle will be spot-on: “There was a limited niche for ‘characters’ in the high school ecosphere, and Rich felt his Smooth-Talking Film Aficionado was going underappreciated due to unfair competition from Henry’s Retro Ghetto Jivist.” But most of the time Doyle sounds like an unwitting codger, trying to impress his children with how well he knows their pop culture and failing badly at it. If he’s not doing this, he’s resorting to the most usual plotlines he can think of, having his characters buy beer and tip cows, as if he had a ledger of Obligatory High School Events he’s checking off, one by damn one. Of course, we have Beth’s menacing meathead boyfriend, Denis’ unadmittedly gay friend Richard Munsch (“Dick Munch”), and Denis’ hippie mother and randy father (check, check, check, check). Beth has a braindead floozy friend and a precociously sardonic friend (check and check). The only things left out are Denis’ Goth sister and Beth’s mischievous/adorable young brother. And maybe a foul-mouthed grandma. Those are always hilarious!!!
Fun Albeit Frosting
What’s odd about this book is that it’s really actually compelling, in the way I assume Us Weekly is compelling—it’s tired, tiring, and totally expected, but it’s so fast-paced (the book flat-out encourages speed-reading, and can be finished in an hour), you don’t mind. As the episode of mediocre television I Love You, Beth Cooper is, it fits nicely in a primetime slot, just as unique and memorable as network programming.
