Banned in Levittown After Bobby Marks Takes Matters Into His Own Hands: Robert Lipsyte's One Fat Summer
At fourteen Bobby Marks has already buried the scale on the far side of 200 pounds – he isn’t sure how far, because he jumped off before the needle stopped moving and refuses to get back on. Even though the Marks family is summering at Lake Rumson as usual, Bobby never goes swimming; dreads the idea of taking off his shirt in public. Mrs. Marks buys Bobby’s clothes at “Huskytown,” clothes he wears with the shirts outside his pants because he can’t button them over his tummy. There’s no denying it: Bobby Marks is fat, fat, fat. The summer of fourteen is also the year Bobby Marks gets his first job, doing yard work for the persnickety old Dr. Marks at fifty cents an hour. Little does he know that this job might change his life – assuming he can survive the heat, Dr. Kahn’s enormous yard, and a summer filled with bullies. The daydreams help – Cavalry Captain Robert Marks to the Rescue! – but mostly what gets Bobby Marks through that One Fat Summer is plain old determination. Though better-known for his work as a sports journalist and a series of young adult baseball novels, Robert Lipsyte’s 1977 YA novel, his first in the genre, reads much like a fictionalized memoir. There may be good reason, too: Lipsyte once penned an essay for the New York Times titled “COPING; My Bullied Days: A Smart Fat Kid’s Story." Based on the scenery and other clues, One Fat Summer is apparently set at about the right time – the early 1950s (Lipsyte turned 14 in 1952). So perhaps he lived Bobby’s story, or parts of it. Lipsyte touches on a broad range of topics in his novel, including teenage romance (his sister), the effects of change on friendships, family dynamics, even racism. There might even be an early glimpse of PTSD. The overarching theme, however, is bullying: the bullying is in part the usual meanness for anyone who is “different” (feel free to read that as “fat”), but there’s also an element of tribalism in a clash of “townies vs. summer folks.” As befits a YA novel for adolescent boys, we get to watch Bobby Marks come of age. It’s not a great novel, not by any stretch of the imagination. Even in 1977 it was probably dated; in 2013 kids would just be confused by a telephone number like RU-6586 or the very thought of working for fifty cents an hour. The plot is quite transparent and the eventual showdown is obvious from the get-go, though the details are less predictable. Perhaps the most striking theme that sounds more like 1977 than 1952 is Mrs. Marks’ college study and desire to become a teacher, and her husband’s at-most-lukewarm support. Though the words are somewhat dated, the message is not: determination and perseverance are good, bullying is not. Maybe more current boys need to be reminded of those facts. Based on themes and language level, probably best for early adolescent boys aged 12-13. Girls would be bored out of their skulls. Great literature or not, One Fat Summer has been the object of many parental challenges and has been removed from libraries in a number of school systems. In 1977, it was removed from a required reading list at a middle school in Levittown, New York, after a parent complained that the book was sexually explicit and full of violence. The book was also withdrawn from the library at a middle school in Greenville, NC, after a parent complained that a passage on masturbation was inappropriate for seventh-grade boys (did she ever look at her 13-year-old son’s hands with a black light? I suspect not…). The author himself once said, “[it was] because of a passage dealing with masturbation that I don't remember writing.” Yeah, well, it’s in there – 27 words out of a 230-page book. The violence, on the other hand, is real. The boy is set upon by older teens and twenty-somethings, blindfolded and stripped naked, slapped around, and left abandoned on an island in the lake. Not a pretty sight; but also an opportunity to showcase kindness and Bobby’s own growth. In an era when anti-bullying campaigns are everywhere, a novel that shows that you can come out the other side a better person seems to me a positive role model. If such a thing is possible (and in the literary world it is), Bobby Marks both shrinks and grows in One Fat Summer. I think that’s a good example, even if he does indulge himself occasionally. |
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