Going Bovine

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

It’s never easy for me to write up a book that I don’t enjoy.  So much of your personal enjoyment of something depends on your own interests and tastes.  Reading Going Bovine is one of the first times that this blog has felt more like a straight up labor than a labor of love.  I got to the point where I was telling myself that really, all the swear words that could have been used were used, and there were very few drugs that have gone unmentioned, so you all wouldn’t mind terribly if I just put this down and backed away right?

I valiantly read onward, which is probably for the best, seeing as the last few chapters were chock full of content you might want to know about.  So also please understand this as full warning that that the content area will be spoilerific.

So what is it that has me so disgruntled?  Going Bovine is the story of a completely self-absorbed teenage boy.  He just also happens to be dying of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Mad Cow, but for humans).  In a Printz winning turn, Bray narrates from his perspective, the last ravaged thoughts of a brain being torn apart.  It’s just that this madness happens to manifest itself in a wild road trip which incorporates elements of Star Wars (cleverly rechristened Star Fighter), The Wizard of Oz, Norse mythology and video games.  If I were the type of person who recreationally used psychotropic drugs , I might be able to verify whether or not it is legitimately trippy, but I lack the experience to make an accurate assessment.

This is also not for the scientifically or mathematically illiterate.  With references to   paramecium, Calabi Yau, Shrodinger’s Cat and various other terms and concepts that may go over the head of many a reader, I hereby give anyone struggling with the text a free pass to abandon it at will.

Have you read this?  Did you like it?  Am I just not getting it because I am both humorless and old?

Other: Characters that are not white are almost always written as speaking differently.

Sex, Nudity, Dating – We know a jock has sex.  The school nickname is the Conquistadors and Cameron points out that perhaps the school is overlooking the fact that Conquistadors raped and pillaged.  Erections are had and discussed (and consequently “penis” and “hard-on” are mentioned).  Birth control pills are mentioned.  Cameron thinks about making a joke about abortion.  Masturbation is mentioned repeatedly. Cameron imagines girls naked. And imagines his father imagining girls naked. Cameron says his father would “cream himself” if he went out for lacrosse.  Rachel is a lesbian.  The boys talk about hot nurse sex. Gonzo thinks the name of a bus sounds “porny”, whatever that means.  There’s woman in New Orleans who is a man.  At one point Gonzo says that music is “raping his eardrums” which isn’t sexual, but it uses “raping” which I feel I need to acknowledge somewhere.  A reference to Catcher in the Rye states that Holden Caulfield visits prostitutes. Cameron’s father may be having an affair.  Girls and boys are in their underwear and then later remove it.  Pubic hair is visible.  People play strip poker and the stages of undress are described.  A garden gnome is dressed as a woman, photographed and shown on a fetish site.  Guys talk about scoring.  Guys look a pen that shows a woman in a bathing suit who loses her top when you flip the pen. Unprotected sex occurs, which is described in some detail, from foreplay onward.  It is revealed towards the end that a character is gay.  A second incident of sex occurs off-screen.
Profanity – “suckage/sucktastic”, “jerk,” “WTF,” “blow,” “bitching,”  “sumabitch”, “asshole,”  “badass,” “ass,””shit/ty,” “shithead,” “hell/ish,” “fuck,” which is used multiple times in multiple forms, “screwed,” “Oh my God,” “bullshit,”  “crap/py,” “craptard,” “bastard,” “Jesus,” “gosh-darn,” “damn,””Goddammit,” “dammit,” “dang,” “pissed/piss off,”  “retard/ed” used as an insult, “chickenshit,” “bejesus,” “Holy Shiite Muslim,” “pendejo,” “mierda,” “pajero,” and “bolo” which may or may not be profane of obscene, my Spanish isn’t that good.  A shirt shows a raised middle finger.
Death, Violence and Gore – Character almost died at Disney World.  A character has a spinal injury that prevents him from playing football.  In a simile something is compared to little kids dying of cancer.  There’s some violence on TV, kids bloody after a bombing.  Cameron also watches some roadrunner cartoons with their requisite anvil dropping and getting run over by trains.  There’s an accidental punch that leads to an actual fight.  A nurse’s daughter died of cancer when she was 5.  Gonzo says his mom will kill him for a)making an expensive call and b)taking a trip without telling her.  Gonzo worries about dying from an allergic reaction to shellfish or from mercury poisoning or from listeria at a salad bar.  Junior Webster dies after playing music with the Wizard of Reckoning.  Gonzo worries that there might be zombies in a graveyard.  They take a ride in a van, but they speculate the van owners might be serial killers.  Cameron gets hit over the head with a gun.  People are excited to watch a horror movie featuring cannibals,the movie is briefly recapped include gore and limbs in the fridge.  The gnome impales himself on a knife, but he’s immortal so it’s not bad. A cat is killed.  They are shot at.  A character will die in the future because he stepped on land mine.  There’s a reference to the sacrifice of Iphigenia.  There’s a fist fight.  Characters (multiple) die.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – Dad drinks a vodka tonic.  Cameron mentions that the jocks act like they are on steroids.  A teacher is known as a lush and is fake quoted as asking for margarita.  People get stoned and offer weed to others.  Main character mentions that he doesn’t do acid.  A “head shop” is mentioned, which in case you don’t know is a store that sells drug paraphernalia.  Cameron is asked if he’s taken shrooms.  He is asked if he sniffs glue, uses meth.  A psychiatrist prescribes medication to Cameron based on what he hallucinates.  College boys drive drunk, tossing beer cans out the window.  A woman on the bus smokes and talks about how smoking can kill you.  Lots of people are drunk in New Orleans.  Many characters smoke cigarettes.  Legal drugs used for medical purposes are deployed in the proper manner.
Frightening or Intense Things – Jenna seems to have an eating disorder.  It is handled flippantly with comments about how she doesn’t ever eat.  Cameron is dying of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.  It is obviously incurable (hence the dying of it).  The disease causes him to see visions, often of fires or black holes.  Cameron is not big on God.  There area lot of illness related medical concerns, like being intubated etc.  Junior Webster spent time in the hospital after the war because of what he’d seen in the war.  There is mailbox smashing and some stealing.