Will Clarke
The Worthy
2006, Simon & Schuster
Gotta admit, I am very NOT curious about what goes on behind the closed doors of college frat houses. It’s a bunch of rich young douchebags being the best douchebags they can be, right? And everyone’s too incomplete, immature and dedicated to being conformists to be interesting.
I’m prejudiced. I admit it. My knowledge of fraternities comes entirely from Animal House and having worked in two restaurants near colleges where the frat menace was real.
They weren’t more rude than any other group in particular; they were just more demanding and they always came in packs. They’d order cheap drinks and then guzzle them down in ten seconds. Every time you walk past them, they need another. They’re also more likely to do stupid shit, such as the time I worked in a place that had an all-you-can-eat special and a band of brothers of the toga showed up and ate and ate and ate until one of them vomited at the table.
Also, they were always seperate checks and you could barely tell them apart, as they tend to look, talk and behave alike.
So, I gave this novel, which is set entirely within the Louisiana State University frat bro world, very little time to win me over. I aimed to be strict and I aimed to be harsh.
Yep, from the very start I was all ready for this book to suck.
A nice, clean, unmolested, “gave up on it at page 20” copy would look great in my trade-in pile.
FINALLY, I can kick a group of frat brothers out of my life with impunity.
And then…
I really enjoyed the book and I zipped through it in two days.
Ah, hell.
The story is a good one: The narrator is Conrad, the ghost of a nineteen-year-old member of LSU’s Gamma Chi. He was murdered by the big dog of the frat, a total psycho politician’s son who beats his stunningly gorgeous girlfriend, feels immune to all legal and moral repurcussions and takes great pleasure in humiliating younger pledges. Now, Conrad is stuck haunting the frat house, watching his own old girlfriend very quickly get another guy, reflecting on how pathetic everything going on in this place is, learning how to manifest his presence in the corporeal world and plotting revenge on the asshole who killed him.
What kept me reading is that writer Will Clarke plays up the horrific side of fraternity initiation. He uses most every awful thing you’ve ever heard about it, from the dangerous levels of forced binge-drinking, the beatings, the psychological tortures, the weird ritiuals in the dark with robes and candles and, yes, even the–ahem!–improprieties with kidnapped farm animals.
Fraternity hazing is depicted here as such a harrowing, brutal, scarring experience that it’s amazing that anyone goes through with it. It’s not so much about proving your mettle as it is about being a plaything for unhinged sadists.
Clarke himself is an LSU alum and former frat brother, which gives his depiction extra weight. And, while it’s likely seasoned with plenty of exaggeration, Clarke’s scenario does seem plausible if you buy that privilege-drunk young men can easily become monsters and if lost young freshmen might endure months of whippings and humiliations to be among the big men on campus, as well as to establish those important connections that might lead to a leg-up on that CEO position someday.
Another thing that I enjoyed about this book is that about halfway through, it struck me as a great metaphor for revisiting your past. And what better way to do that than as a ghost? Above it all. On a whole other plane. So far removed from your old self that you can now make fun of what you used to care about so much.
And that leads me to the third thing that I liked about this book and that’s that it’s darn funny in between the dark stuff.
Conrad the Not-So-Friendly Ghost is one sarcastic son of a bitch. Now that he’s dead and no longer a part of anything, he lets rip with all sorts of venom about life at the frat house. He’s over it. It’s all stupid to him, a bad soap opera. He can watch people in their private moments and see how small and sad they are. His weaknesses are his old attachments. His girlfriend. His family. His lust for revenge. Or justice. Whatever you want to call it.
Here, death is freedom, but it’s also profound loss. Even as a ghost. You can see everything, but it’s hard to communicate. You can sometimes possess another person, but the rules for how to do that (and how to get out of it) are mysterious and seemingly subject to the whims of a higher power. Conrad never figures it out. A ghost’s situation is complete shit. Life is better.
Meanwhile, Clarke goes with the idea of God (a few deeply, sincerely Christian characters here can see and hear Conrad the ghost), as well as reincarnation, but does so without turning the book into a religious tract or an argument for any spiritual belief. No, Clarke goes with that stuff because it simply makes for a BETTER story.
What Conrad does while he’s a ghost is a test. The conflict here isn’t between him and the fuckface who killed him; it’s an internal one in which he works out exactly how bad he’s going to be now that he can possess people and spy on everyone. Clarke digs into it fiercely and in the smooth and simple language of a page-turner.
And that’s another thing that kept me reading.