As you may remember, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the incredibly hyped King Dork by Frank Portman. How red hot is King Dork? Check out this picture of Rick Neilsen reading the book. Here’s a lady who couldn’t put King Dork down while in the hospital after giving birth. What’s your book been up to lately?

King Dork Cover

King Dork is Tom Henderson, a born-to-lose high school student. He’s also called Moe, Chi-Mo, Hender-Fag, and other fantastic high school nicknames. Tom’s high school is typical. AP classes are where you get to do less work for more credit. Advanced French is for people who speak awful French in the present tense and talk about the time, the weather, and this one guy Jean and this other guy Claude. Girls are mysterious or just plain weird. You know, high school.

Tom’s dream is to be in a great rock and roll band. Much of Tom’s time is spent plotting the band’s meteoric rise along with sidekick and fellow ostracized teen, Sam Hellerman. They come up with countless band names, album titles, and album credits, like band #23:

The Elephants of Style
Guitar: Mot Juste
Bass and Animal Husbandry: Sam Enchanted Evening
First Album: Devil Warship

The great thing about having a teen protagonist is that he gets to have a strong opinion on just about everything and can make definitive statements like this:

The Sweet…maybe the were only the the second-greatest rock and roll band of all time, but they made the first-greatest album of all time (Desolation Boulevard) and the all-time greatest song in the history of music (”Fox on the Run“)

If you were or are a teen boy who obsesses about music, this kind of stuff is pure gold. The author may know a thing or two about having rock and roll dreams. Frank Portman is the singer/guitarist of the very good (but under appreciated) punk band, The Mr. T Experience. A living that he apparently turned down graduate school at Harvard to pursue. In spite of the built in life-long street cred that comes with being at the helm of a punk band that never sold out, Portman may secretly be a dork, just like us. Exhibit A: The author’s photograph on the dust jacket features Portman and a robot. A girl robot.

At any rate, the book is not just a rock and roll fantasy, coming of age story (or is it a bildungsroman?). Although it would stand as a masterpiece on those terms alone. It also works in literary criticism, mystery, conspiracy theories, awkward sex, and more fake names than are technically necessary.
In the course of plotting out rock stardom, Tom stumbles across some books that belonged to his late father - including The Catcher in the Rye. Tom loathes Catcher in the Rye and has a hilarious rant about the book and the cult of teaching it. Through the books, Tom stumbles across mysterious coded entries in the margins. Sam and Tom try to unravel the mystery with some surprising twists. Really, the mystery is almost beside the point.

Tom and Sam also try to understand the profound riddle of high school girls. They are purposely ignored or actively humiliated by the girls in their school. Every once in while though, through bizarre twists of fate and baffling encounters, Tom finds himself involved in inexplicable sexual escapades. There has been some criticism of the portrayal of the girls in this book. These encounters may seem a little one sided to the ladies, but they seem to me to be entirely in keeping with the male-rock-fantasy-teen-voice of the book. Sorry to say it, but that’s how girls look from the viewpoint of a teenage boy. I guess. There were no girls (zero) at my high school, which, if anything, made them even more baffling and alien. Besides, no one is more surprised by the action than Tom.

The book is pitch perfect in its portrayal of high school and is written with a knowing humor that is irresistible. It includes section titles like: High School is the Penalty for Transgressions Yet to Be Specified and What Happens When you Need to Get to Slut Heaven as Quickly As Possible but You Can’t Drive Yet. It has a handy guide to all of the Sam/Tom band names for easy reference. It also has a glossary so readers can quickly settle bets about the ranks of the greatest bands of all time (Wishbone Ash is 65,893-rd).

I could not recommend this book more highly than to buy it for you and drive it over to your house and put it directly in your grubby mitts. We both know that’s not going to happen, so check it out on your own.
Bonus King Dork Material: