Title: Elliot Allagash
Author: Simon Rich
Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Pub Date: 2010; this edition: 2011
Read: Aug 2011
Source: Borders
Why: It seemed like it would be funny. The author was a Harvard student (who as far as I can tell was actually there at the same time as me, not that I noticed because I’m oblivious when it comes to other people’s existence) and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Lampoon
Fulfills Challenge? No
Notes: I am just now remembering that I was put off by the author’s Rumpus interview in which he said Borges (as well as Joyce and Pynchon, or at least V.) “sucked” and that the books were “boring and sloppy and plotless.” I’ve only read Borges, whom I enjoyed once I wasn’t reading him in Spanish (i.e. I finally understood what was going on), but I find this sort of assessment a bit thoughtless and flippant. He goes on to say that “By the time I got to college I had stopped reading books because I wanted to “be cool” and started reading books simply because I wanted to read them” which is awesome except for the fact that in college you end up reading plenty of stuff you have no desire to read. It comes with the territory, especially at a school that has core requirements as Harvard does. The good news is I’d forgotten this interview until today, and so my feelings on it were not colored by it whatsoever.
Synopsis [from the jacket copy]:
Painfully shy and physically inept, Seymour Herson is the lowest student on the social totem pole at Glendale, a private school in Manhattan. But Seymour’s solitary existence comes to a swift end when he meets the new transfer student, Elliot Allagash, evil heir to America’s largest fortune. Bitter and bored with Glendale’s pedestrian surroundings, Elliot decides to take up a challenging and expensive hobby: transforming Seymour into the most popular boy in the school. With Elliot as his diabolical strategist, investor, and unlikely best friend, Seymour scores a spot on the basketball team, becomes class president, and ruthlessly destroys his enemies. Yet despite the glow of newfound popularity, Seymour feels increasingly uneasy with Elliot’s wily designs. For an Allagash victory is dishonorable at its best, and positively ruinous at its worst.
Review/Thoughts:
It took me only 2 days to read this book, and it probably wouldn’t have even taken that long if I hadn’t been reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Pretty Monsters at the same time. I flew through 70 pages on the train ride back and forth between my house and Prince St. without even realizing it. The book is light and mildly entertaining though not that funny. It reminds me a bit of The Cheese Monkeys except that Kidd’s novel, though not a masterpiece, is better written. Elliot Allagash’s schemes are ridiculous and unbelievable but inventive. Eventually it felt as though I was reading the book for the schemes themselves because everything else about the novel is fairly predictable. You can tell where this is headed almost from the boys’ first interaction. If I’m being completely honest, you can tell where the book is headed just from the copy. Elliot and Seymour aren’t particularly well-developed, functioning mostly as stock characters or archetypes. Elliot in particular seems utterly devoid of humanity, and not just because of his sociopathic tendencies. There’s a scene where Elliot’s father tells Seymour about Elliot’s mother, but what does the reader gain from this revelation? Absolutely nothing.
If you don’t expect much from this book, it’s a decent way to pass the time. I’d probably recommend borrowing over buying it though.
Final Verdict: 
Fells like a plot that has been done over and over and over….is it so hard to write something original?
apparently!
The only “original” aspect of this were the schemes themselves. Those were interesting to read but after a while even that got old because you want more from the story than just HEY! How did you manage to ruin/bring down this person?
*feels