The UNglorified Autobiography

     Teen Angst? Naah... by Ned Vizzini is a very unique book. It is an autobiography about his own life through Junior high to his senior year at Stuyvesant High school.

       The reason why I find this book to be so unique is because Ned Vizzini pretty much tells it like it is. He doesn't over-exaggerate events; he doesn't make it feel like a bigger deal than it is. It literally feels like you are looking into someone else's life, not a life that they just wanted you to believe. Ned even mentions this every once in a while in the book. One of the places that this idea shows itself in the clearest way is when Ned gets a summer job working for an Italian man that he has never met before, named Carlo. I think that this quote from that time pretty much sums up my idea completely: "Working for Carlo, however, was mostly not cutesy anecdotes. It was abuse...In a movie, I would have stayed with Carlo. I would have taught him how to read; he would have taught how to seduce beautiful [women]. I would have mellowed him out; he would have toughened me up...Instead, I called Hector [to offer him my job]."

     I am very happy that Ned Vizzini chose not to glorify his life. I hate when authors of autobiographies do that. I read autobiographies to read about something that actually happened, not of what the author wanted to happen in their head. It also makes Ned easier to relate to. Reading this book, I almost knew how it felt to be Ned when he was a teenager. I don't know the glorified and exaggerated events and feelings of other autobiographies. But the feelings and events that Ned experiences, yeah I know them pretty well.

     Overall, these particular aspects of Teen Angst? Naaah.. just made it all the more enjoyable.  It is a very light-hearted and funny book, a book that I will definitely read again. On top of that, this has also inspired me. It has inspired me to lo look autobiographies, and even books overall, in a very different way. As I look back on past autobiographies that I have read, It makes me wonder, What were they really thinking?