WILD OATS

by Jacob Epstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 1979

What are the odds that Epstein, fresh out of college himself, would be able to take short-range aim at college life and emerge with anything fresh, winning, and funny? Not very likely. But that's exactly what he's done. Billy Williams, 17, slogs through the freshman year at Beacham College (the only school that accepted him). He's glad to be out of the house and away from home, where Mom is about to try a third marriage, this time with a boorish Daily News columnist who (according to rumor) pushed two previous wives off mountain tops on hiking trips. Beacham College is no bed of roses, either, of course. Billy has to forge an image. (He settles on slob: ""careless, distracted, and overworked."") There are roommates to be tolerated, adolescent guilts to be maneuvered around. (Billy has a nightmare in which a Penthouse Pet gives him hell: ""So maybe I did pose for those pictures, l needed the money. I couldn't get any gigs. I was broke. Tahoe's deadsville. No one goes there anymore. So is that a crime? Does that make me somehow less of a person? Does that give this little creep the right to jerk off all over me?"") And, above all, Billy must suffer through his moony longing for one Zizi Zanzibar--beautiful, glacial, serene Zizi who, it turns out, is over her freshperson head in an affair with a comically distraught English professor; she uses Billy to lift herself out. This non-plot swings along only because Epstein can stack unpretentious and funny chapter on chapter, because he can make Billy and his troubles never so earthshattering that Billy himself can't see them for the fleabites they are. The smashing debut--the limitations of the basic materials here notwithstanding--of a writer of distinct, natural charm.

Pub Date: May 29, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION