"a map of tulsa" was a flavorpill recommend and proved that no website is perfect. "a map of tulsa" is an example that i should not always read what flavorpill says i must.
though i will add that flavorpill was quoting publisher weekly when they said:
Publisher’s Weekly recently dubbed this elegiac love letter — to Tulsa, to a girl, to the late-’90s art scene — as the coming-of-age novel to replace Catcher in the Rye for “recent generations of Internet-suckled American youth.” And it’s never too late to come of age again.
i of course read this book because of the "catcher" allusion. and shame on publisher weekly for ever attempting to put this book in the same league let alone sentence as "catcher". and i know i am not its target audience but my dislike of this book doesn't have to do with my age. whereas i loved holden, i had no real connection with jim (which is proven by the fact that right now i had to google to find his name). he is what we in the late-90s would have called a poser and a user. he was this pseudo intellectual that would never truly be a poet because he lacked a very important characteristic of a poet, a heart. lytal would write these poetic lines to demonstrate jim's gift of poetry but all it did was make both of them look pretentious and silly.
"a map of tulsa" is the story of jim returning home to tulsa for summer break after his first year at college. while back home, he fell in "love" with an artsy girl named adrienne (also had to google her name). doesn't everyone fall in love with eccentric artsy girl?!?!? adrienne was a heiress to an oil empire, a high school drop-out turned artist/musician, so a 90s slacker (the predessor to the hipster cos i mean only rich kids can afford to slack
like that). but what jim feels for adrienne really isn't love but more like lust and desperation to be associated with greatness. she is a local legend and jim was in love with the idea of adrienne than adrienne. lytal tells us that jim loves her but there is no real indication of that, just words one can read versus emotional one can feel. i mean he bought her a gun as a token of his affection. to be honest, jim pretty much just used her for her coolness and money. he had this whole plan to live with her and then one day up and leaves.
jim returned to school and grows up in new york. he and adrienne never communicated after all those years. then out of nowhere adrienne has a bad motorcycle accident and jim flies home. he hangs around the hospital with adrienne's family and friends but is more concerned with how others perceive his connection to adrienne other than adrienne's recovery. jim has a lot of regret but with adrienne in a coma, nothing is resolved. then *spoiler alert*
adrienne dies. jim attempted to have some deep life lesson but again he is a user and a poser so he has it though it doesn't seem genuine.
this book was bad there was no depth to his characters. it felt like lytal thought he was going to write this profoundly beautiful book but it seriously fell short. it's almost like he wrote this to impress a girl, probably the adrienne, of his life but he definitively tried too hard and if i was that girl i would be insulted his love resulted in something so boring and shallow.
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