Downtown Owl (edit title)

Allisonnn edited the summary of Downtown Owl 14 hours ago.

• Owl, North Dakota is a very small town. With less than 1,000 inhabitants, everyone seems to know everyone. It is 1983, and the old men meet for coffee and nostalgia, and the young men meet for beer, reliving football glory days. Just six months before a devastating storm hits this sleepy burg, readers of Chuck Klosterman's wonderful debut work of fiction are introduced to three Owl citizens: Mitch, Julia and Horace. Despite the apparent lack of excitement in Owl, these three, and their friends and family, lead interesting and compelling lives, deftly rendered by Klosterman.

  Mitch Hrlicka is a high school football player in Owl. He is smart and introspective, a bit more thoughtful than most of his friends but still a typical teenage boy in many ways. He fantasizes about killing his sleazy but intellectually provocative English teacher (Mr. Laidlaw, who is also his football coach, has impregnated at least two of his students and has assigned Orwell's 1984 to the entire school), and he fantasizes about the outcome of a fight between the school’s two loosest canons. He disdains popular music, and his bedroom is devoid of personal objects. He is totally different from and yet completely the same as all the other kids in Owl.

  Julia Rabia just moved to Owl from the big city, accepting a teaching position. At 23, she is not quite over her college party days and finds herself drinking away her loneliness and mild depression in Owl's many bars every night. Because she is new to town and single, she is the most attractive woman to Owl's unmarried men, and they all hope she will go out with them (to see E.T. before the town's local movie theater is scheduled to shut down). But it is the enigmatic Vance Druid, a famous football has-been, who catches her eye. Their courting is both hilarious and sad as they try to navigate a situation they seem incapable of handling normally.

  Horace Jones has lived in Owl all of his 73 years. He and his cronies meet every afternoon for coffee, conversing about the weather, local football and the wars they fought or didn't fight in. A widower, Horace is content and serene, though he misses his wife. He occupies his time with friends, the farm and nonfiction. Horace though has two dark secrets he has shared with no one. He represents the full life lived in Owl, while Mitch is the town's young man full of potential and Julia is the outsider slowly becoming a full member of the community.

Allisonnn edited the quotations of Downtown Owl 14 hours ago.

• Added a quotation: “All I know about R.L. Stine is that his name is nearly identical to the Wheel of Fortune Bonus Round free characters.”
• Added a quotation: “I bet that slick film school shit works on a lot of people.”

Allisonnn edited the characters of Downtown Owl 14 hours ago.

• Edited a character: MitchMitch Hrlicka: a stoic high school backup quarterback who is depressed for no apparent reason.
• Edited a character: JuliaJulia Rabia: the newest resident of Owl. She moved to the small town to teach history and spends much of her free time at the local bars.
• Edited the description of Vance Druid: a famous football has-been who catches Julia's eyes.
• Added the description of John Laidlaw: an intellectually provocative english teacher that also happens to be the school's football coach. Laidlaw has impregnated two high school girls in Owl despite being married, and has assigned 1984 as a reading assignment for the whole high school.
• marked the description of John Laidlaw as not a spoiler
• Added the description of Horace Jones: born and raised in owl, celebrating his 73rd year there. He meets with his friends every afternoon for coffee and conversation.
• marked the description of Horace Jones as not a spoiler

Allisonnn edited the characters of Downtown Owl 2 weeks ago.

• Changed the section title: Cast of Characters/Important People
• Added the description of Mitch: a stoic high school backup quarterback who is depressed for no apparent reason.
• marked the description of Mitch as not a spoiler
• Added the description of Julia: the newest resident of Owl. She moved to the small town to teach history and spends much of her free time at the local bars.
• marked the description of Julia as not a spoiler
• Added a character: Vance Druid

Allisonnn edited the first sentence of Downtown Owl 2 weeks ago.

• When Mitch Hrlicka heard that his high school football coach had gotten another girl pregnant, he was forty bushels beyond bamboozled.

Timothy Gray approved AndrewTheLott’s request to change the title of Downtown Owl Sunday, October 4 2009.

AndrewTheLott changed the title of Downtown Owl Thursday, October 1 2009.

Shelfari edited the description of Downtown Owl Friday, July 31 2009.

• New York Times Bestselling Author Chuck Klosterman's First Novel Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect. Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. She gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer who listens to Goats Head Soup . Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. He consumes a lot of coffee, thinks about his dead wife, and understands the truth. They all know each other completely, except that they've never met. Like a colder, Reagan-era version of The Last Picture Show fused with Friday Night Lights , Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. Loaded with detail and unified by a (very real) blizzard, it's technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time...but it's really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl , what matters more is how you ask the question.

Shelfari edited the contributors of Downtown Owl Wednesday, July 22 2009.

• Added a contributor: Chuck Klosterman: (Primary Author)