The Bookworm: College Weekend
College Weekend, by R.L. Stine. 147 pages. Archway Paperbacks. July 1995.
I’d better play along, she decided. I’d better play along until I can get out of here safely. I can’t afford to make him really angry. (p. 109)
Bobblehead and I exchanged texts about Thomas Pynchon the other day. He’s reading Gravity’s Rainbow, a book I have always wanted to read. I’ve also wanted to read Inherent Vice. Having seen the movie, I want to see if the book makes any sense. (The first time I saw parts of the movie, I thought it was either stoned nonsense or pure genius.)
Before I move on to any Pynchon, though, I have some Fear Street novels I want to clear out of my reading queue. First up is College Weekend, the tale of a college visit from hell.
“Nothing can ruin Tina Rivers’ big weekend at Patterson College with her boyfriend, Josh Martin,” begins the synopsis on the back cover. “She’s so excited, she doesn’t even mind that her cousin, Holly, will be tagging along.” However, when Tina and Holly arrive, Josh is nowhere to be found. When Josh’s roommate, Chris, rescues them from the train station, he tells them Josh went camping but will be back soon.
Chris shows them around in Josh’s absence, and Tina feels an instant connection to her boyfriend’s roommate. Not only does Tina find Chris attractive, they have similar interests in music, particularly a band called The Psycho Surfers. He’s a photographer, too, whose uncle is well known in the fashion industry; Chris is keen to take photos of Tina, an aspiring model. Tina even succumbs to Chris’s advances at a party.
As the visit progresses and Josh’s return is delayed again and again, Tina gets the feeling something is very wrong. Holly disappears, Tina finds Josh’s car keys and hiking boots in his dorm room, and she feels like everyone knows something she doesn’t, but Chris assures her over and over that everything is okay. When Chris takes her to his studio, the basement of a seemingly abandoned building, Tina discovers everything is not okay.
College Weekend is creepy. Without getting too specific (despite the fact I know almost no one reading this will ever read the book), Tina endures disturbing aggressiveness and abnormal behavior. The book is very realistic in that sense: Women cope with all kinds of shit (for lack of a better term) perpetrated by very bad dudes. The story is especially relevant in the age of #metoo. There are parts of this book that made me cringe with unease and disgust.
The book is also one hell of a bummer. Everything works out at the end of many other Fear Street books, and there is often a fluffy, feel-good final chapter to tie loose ends. Not so with College Weekend. It ends abruptly, albeit on a positive note; however, there is very little to feel good about.
Despite that, there are lighter moments and quirks that made me laugh and smile:
• Tina assumes that Chris is rich because he has a car phone and a “color Mac with CD-ROM and a laser printer” (p. 21).
• Tina notes that Josh did not mention how handsome Chris is. Well duh! What did she want him to do? Say my roommate is smokin’ hot and I can see you and him getting along really well and grinding behind my back when you visit?
• When Holly disappears, Tina fears that her cousin is “lying in a ditch somewhere. Or tied to a chair, being tortured by drunken bikers” (p. 74). Being tortured by drunken bikers is obviously horrible, but I could not help laughing out loud when I read that line. It is so unexpected.
Overall, the college scene described by Stine is reminiscent of PCU. College Weekend was released during the same era, so it is hard not to think of the crew in “The Pit” at the parties Tina attends. (I just read that PCU was filmed at the University of Toronto. Damn it! If I had known that, I would have paid a short visit while I was in Toronto two weeks ago.) Having grown up in a college town, the early and mid-nineties shaped my image of college and college life, so the party scenes in the book (and those in PCU) remind me a lot of Iowa City at that time. Particularly, I remember sitting in traffic on Myrtle Avenue after the Michigan-Iowa game in 1994, listening to Open House Party on Q103, watching the college parties kick off in the houses and apartment buildings lining the street, the sounds of the same show blasting from many home stereos. (Introducing “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails that evening, I remember John Garabedian saying the song was very popular with women.)
