Doug Swieteck Steps Out of the Shadows in the Luminous Okay For Now

In Gary Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars, the young narrator, Holling, receives an extraordinary opportunity that he shares with two other boys. One of them is class troublemaker Doug Swieteck, and his inclusion in this invitation has an even greater impact on him than on the main character and his best friend. That much is plain just from Holling’s observation. But it isn’t until Okay For Now, Schmidt’s equally remarkable sequel, that we get to hear Doug speak for himself and come to understand just how profoundly this incident moved him.

At the beginning of Okay For Now, Doug and his family relocate to Marysville, still in New York but a bit of a distance away from the big city. They move into a ramshackle house Doug refers to as The Dump, and at first glance, he sees nothing in town that looks too promising. It’s the summer before eighth grade, and Doug is hot and miserable, keenly aware of being an outsider in a boring town with judgmental residents. At home, he has to deal with his older brother, a whirling dervish of destruction, and his father, who seems like an adult version of his brother. His oldest brother, Lucas, is off fighting in the Vietnam War, though Doug can’t say he misses him much, since Lucas wasn’t any nicer to him than the other men of the family. Doug’s mother, however, is another matter. She speaks very little throughout the novel, as she is cowed by the fear of an abusive husband, but she clearly is a woman of warmth and compassion, and Doug adores her.

In Wednesday Wars, the central relationship of the book is between Holling and his teacher, Mrs. Baker. Several mentors come into Doug’s life in his eighth grade year, but his core relationship is with Lil Spicer, a spunky classmate he meets on his first day in town. It is she who leads him to the library where he will discover the artwork of John James Audubon and befriend Mr. Powell, a librarian who gives him art lessons. It is she who gets him a job working as a delivery boy for her father’s deli, which leads to several more acquaintanceships, most importantly with Mrs. Windermere, an eccentric playwright, and the Daughertys, who hire Doug to babysit regularly for their five rambunctious children. It is she who becomes his truest refuge in the tumultuous year to follow.

Doug makes no secret of his devotion to his mother, but he is even more effusive in his praise of Lil and can scarcely mention her without remarking on her dazzling green eyes – a trait she shares, incidentally, with Lily, the virtuous mother of Harry Potter – or her stunning smile or the warmth of her hand when she reaches over to squeeze his in encouragement. My favorite of his many descriptions comes toward the end of the book, in the chapter named after the Brown Pelican print that hangs in the office of Principal Peattie, a condescending man who speaks of himself in the third person and is prejudiced against Doug because of the rumors circulating about his brother. “You know how pretty someone can be when she opens up a book?” Doug asks us. “Especially if she has brown hair the color of the pelican’s feathers?”

Just as a series of Shakespeare’s plays provides a good deal of scaffolding for Wednesday Wars, the birds of Audobon give this book structure and focus. Doug is startled to find himself so drawn to those birds, and he recoils at Mr. Powell’s initial attempts to encourage him to artistically capture them. But they become incredibly important to him. Each is a bird featured in a magnificent collection of Audobon paintings housed at the library – a hefty volume that is incomplete because the town council has seen fit to sell individual prints from the book to collectors. Restoring those birds to their proper place in the library becomes Doug’s overarching mission for the year. Having this concrete goal, as well as the perpetual project of becoming more adept at drawing the birds, is very good for Doug. Moreover, studying the birds at length helps him to work through some of his own issues.

Doug frequently asks the reader some variation of “You know how that feels?” He wants us to be able to put ourselves into his situation, just as he puts himself into the situation of the birds in the paintings. It turns out that he is a deeply empathetic soul, with a great concern for the lonely, the weak, the disenfranchised, the frightened. He sees these qualities in many of the birds he studies; they seem to him fellow victims of an unfair fate. But gradually, he begins to see other things as well, like nobility, compassion, devotion and courage. As he looks at these birds in a new light, he begins to imagine new possibilities for himself as well.

Doug has a wonderfully earthy pre-teen voice. It’s more direct and less pensive than Holling’s, and I didn’t really get the sense, as I did in the first book, that he was looking back on this year from several years in the future. His gruff, matter-of-fact tone reminds me of LOST’s Frank Lapidus; his style can perhaps best be summed up in his assessment of his English class’s poetry unit: “Why can’t poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?” His words, especially toward the beginning, often have a harsh edge. He liberally applies the word “stupid,” particularly if he’s describing Marysville. “Terrific,” he often grumbles, allowing that sarcastic thought a line to itself on the page. “So what?” comes up a lot, as does “I’m not lying”; this is a kid who is used to being on the defensive. He also frequently refers to himself as a chump – or, conversely, protests that he is not a chump.

Although Doug’s mind is often an angsty place to be, it has an undeniable beauty of its own, and his repetitive turns of phrase come to feel enjoyably familiar rather than annoyingly redundant. He is at his most poetic when he draws comparisons between the birds and himself, his family members and Lil, though his rambling run-on sentences, many of which describe moments of unexpected happiness, also offer a refreshing break from his typically terse style. It feels as though he’s releasing a whole lot of pent-up emotion. For instance: “You know how good an orange Dreamsicle tastes on a blue fall day when you’re full of grilled chicken and your mother is laughing a real laugh like she used to and once you look over and your father is holding her hand like they haven’t in a long long long time?”

One of Doug’s frequent observations is that when things seem to be going well, they always take a turn for the worse. His eighth grade year is full of ups and downs, and while many of Holling’s low points in the previous book are comically disastrous, Doug’s tend to veer more toward the tragic. It’s hard for him to imagine a truly happy life for himself. When he does dare to dream, most of his visions involve baseball player Joe Pepitone, his personal hero. In the first book, baseball provides a harsh lesson for Holling in just how much those we look up to can let us down. The lesson Doug gets is quite the opposite – that sometimes, when you least expect it, people may step up to the plate. Good things can happen, even to a guy who’s always been stuck with his brothers’ discarded leftovers and judged by their misdeeds, and the statistics that he studies so intently don’t necessarily determine what is going to happen next. Life is full of surprises, and some of them are wonderful.

As in Wednesday Wars, the historical context is of the utmost importance to this novel. The Vietnam War rages on, and eventually Lucas returns from it, changed almost beyond recognition, which in turn sparks a massive change in the Swieteck family dynamics. Through Lucas and Doug’s gym teacher, a former drill sergeant, Schmidt delves into the war’s effect upon those who lived through it as soldiers. Meanwhile, Doug’s favorite teacher, the enthusiastic and kind-hearted Mr. Ferris, is ecstatic over the impending moon landing. Schmidt also sneaks in some sly jokes as he has teachers contemplate the future. Between Mr. Ferris and Mr. Powell, I found this book to be quite science-oriented, while faith plays a prominent role in the first book. This also seems to be a reflection of the differences between the two young narrators, one more philosophical, the other more down-to-earth. The differing perspectives deepen each other rather than detracting.

I loved The Wednesday Wars. Okay For Now is similar in some ways and very distinct in others, and I honestly can’t say which of the two I liked better. Each is equally exquisite, and I am excited to hear that Schmidt plans one more companion novel. Although there is minimal overlap between the two stories, read the first book first, as some of the events here will make a greater impact that way (and a couple of the events in the first will be spoiled for you if you read out of order). Then crack open the cover of this book and let yourself get lost in it. Doug Swieteck may be just “okay for now,” but his story is nothing short of exceptional.

Holling Hoodhood Learns About Life, Love and Literature in The Wednesday Wars

The year is 1967. Holling Hoodhood, a seventh-grader in Long Island, lives in a pristine house with his mother, a covert chain-smoker; his father, an architect with ruthless business principles; and his older sister, who dreams of running off to California to become a flower child. As he knows from the Walter Cronkite broadcasts that his father watches each evening, the Vietnam War is raging overseas, but to Holling, this is more of an abstraction than a pressing concern. More troubling to him is the question of what he ever did to make his teacher, Mrs. Baker, hate him.

Holling is the sometimes naïve, sometimes insightful but almost always endearing narrator of Gary Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars, a 2007 mid-grade novel given Newbery Honor status. Mrs. Baker is a particular problem for him because every Wednesday, while half his class goes to Catechism and the other half to Hebrew school, he, the only Presbyterian in the seventh grade, must remain behind with his teacher. When the first couple months of his school year are marked by several unlikely disasters, it only adds fuel to his suspicion that she has formulated an elaborate plan to make him as miserable as possible. But when she introduces the subversive tactic of making him read Shakespeare instead of clapping erasers during their time together, Holling is sure he has the upper hand. She clearly intends to torture him with these musty tomes, but he actually is enjoying himself. Could her evil plot be failing?

The Wednesday Wars is a book that encompasses and transcends several subgenres within juvenile literature: the coming-of-age story, the historical novel, the inspirational teacher tale, the book framed by the reading of other books. The 264-page novel contains ten chapters, each covering one month in the school year, with particular focus on Wednesdays. Throughout the year, Holling immerses himself in several of Shakespeare’s plays: The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing. He becomes entranced with the rhythm of Shakespeare’s words – particularly his colorful insults, of which “pied ninny” and “toads, beetles, bats” are among his favorites – and he begins to think more deeply about his own life and the world around him as a result of his reading.

Mrs. Baker is a stern, demanding teacher cut from the same cloth as Minerva McGonagall, the severe Transfiguration professor in the Harry Potter series. She will not hand anything to her students on a silver platter. Nonetheless, Holling begins to understand that there is a human being behind that strict façade, one as capable of both agony and ecstasy as he is. And while he may miss her subtle sense of humor at first, by the end of the year, the twinkle in her eye is easier for him to identify. While Holling’s primary focus is on how she relates to him, he does pick up on her interactions with other students, each of which reveals a bit more about her personality and values. Mostly, she refrains from telling Holling what to make of a particular play, allowing him to draw conclusions for himself, but when she does chime in with her own reflections, we truly get a glimpse of what makes her tick.

Schmidt skillfully weaves his tale in such a way that although the school, and particularly Holling’s classroom, always seem bustling, we never become overwhelmed with characters. He wisely focuses on just a few classmates. Meryl Lee Kowalski, whose father is Mr. Hoodhood’s primary business rival, has a fierce affection for Holling that often manifests itself as aggression. The relationship between these two is mostly comical for the first few chapters but eventually becomes one of the most poignant elements of the book. Danny Hupfer, a lively boy preparing for his bar mitzvah, is Holling’s closest friend, while Doug Swieteck is the class troublemaker who seems to be taking after his dangerously delinquent brother. Mai Thi Huong, a solemn orphan recently brought over from Vietnam by a Catholic Relief Agency, has little to say, but she brings the impact of the war home to Holling in a powerful way.

Along with Holling’s peers are several adults of note, most of them connected with the school. Mr. Guareschi, the principal, runs his school like a dictatorship. His administrative style is mostly cause for mockery, though his lack of concern for student welfare is galling. School board member Mrs. Sidman, traumatized by her encounters with the Swietecks, finds that they have prepared her well for the unexpected challenges that come her way. Mr. Petrelli is known for his laughable insistence upon personal relevance in history projects like “The California Gold Rush and You,” while the overzealous Coach Quatrini works Holling to the bone after he wins a spot on the varsity cross-country team in one of the funniest chapters. Lunchlady Mrs. Bigio, like Mrs. Baker, has a deeply personal connection to the war; unlike Mrs. Baker, this has a detrimental impact upon how she relates to certain students. Mr. Goldman, the jovial baker whose shop is near the school, helps Holling with one predicament but lands him in another one that will haunt him for months to come.

Finally, the behavior of Meryl Lee and Danny’s parents casts a revealing light upon Holling’s dad, who expects his son to take over his architectural firm and has no qualms about putting him into embarrassing situations if it might further a future client relationship. What he won’t do is extend the smallest personal loan to help his children out of a jam or divert from his routine in order to support them in their endeavors. Ultimately the most frustrating character in the novel, he unwittingly facilitates several of its sweetest moments as others rally to make up for his indifference.

Holling’s narrative voice is wonderful, an intriguing mix of the soul of a seventh-grader and the eloquence of an adult whose early introduction to Shakespeare seems to have led to a continuing love of language. He settles into the limited viewpoint of his junior high days, and we’re certainly getting the thought process of an early teen, complete with moments of amusing cluelessness. For instance, when he begins reading The Tempest, he’s sure that Mrs. Baker has never read it, or she wouldn’t have assigned him something with such colorful language. It never seems to cross his mind that the monstrous villains of the play might have inspired the names of the class’s hideous pet rats, with which he came into startlingly close contact in the previous chapter.

At the same time, there is a certain difference between his narrative voice and his dialogue or the essays he writes for Mrs. Baker. While it’s not self-consciously reminiscent and never looks ahead to what befalls characters in later years, it does remind me a bit of the voiceovers in A Christmas Story or The Wonder Years. These are his immediate reactions, but polished just a little in the meantime. Sometimes, his observations are wryly funny: “Life got brighter, and somehow, the world suddenly got brighter, too. You know how this is? You’re walking along, and then the sun comes out from behind a cloud, and the birds start to sing, and the air is suddenly warm, and it’s like the whole world is happy because you’re happy. It’s a great feeling. But never trust it. Especially in November on Long Island.” Others are somber: “Maybe the first time that you know you really care about something is when you think about it not being there, and then you know – you really know – that the emptiness is as much inside you as outside you.” And, of course, Shakespearean quotes frequently wriggle their way into the crevices of the narrative. Perhaps my favorite: “The quality of mercy doesn’t drop much from Gym teachers.”

The book’s setting is of vital importance to the story, and the tumultuous international events of late 1967 and early 1968 are never as distant as they initially seem to Holling. The culture war divides his own family as his Beatles-loving, face-paint-wearing peacenik sister tries to assert herself against their disapproving father. Amidst looming fears of atomic warfare, the Columbia protests, the Battle of Khe Sanh and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy are among the major historical milestones that affect Holling as he becomes more keenly aware of the divisions that rend his world as surely as they did Shakespeare’s.

Over the course of the year, Holling studies, observes and even takes part in any number of wars. While the Vietnam War provides a historical backdrop and several grand Shakespearean conflicts offer literary context, he becomes more aware of the wars that surround him. Some are hysterical, like the war his class and a couple of teachers wage on the rogue Sycorax and Caliban or the ill will that develops when Holling receives a much-desired delicacy while his classmates are away. Others are inspiring, like the cross-country competition in which Danny and Holling compete. But many are cause for deep turmoil, whether it’s the ideological divide in his own family or the prejudicial attitudes that poison interpersonal relationships at school, and he begins to understand what Mrs. Baker means when she says Macbeth tells her “That we are made for more than power. That we are made for more than our desires. That pride combined with stubbornness can be disaster. And that compared with love, malice is a small and petty thing.”

Seventh grade is generally a chaotic time no matter when one enters it, but the typical insecurities, miscommunications and awkwardness that mark this age become magnified when the whole world is in upheaval. The Wednesday Wars makes grand events intimate and shows how tiny events can have far-reaching effects. “Love and hate are not far apart in the seventh grade, let me tell you,” Holling asserts. Perhaps, then, this is the perfect time to painstakingly learn how to reject the second in favor of the first. In this novel that is at once hilarious and deeply moving, Holling takes those steps and invites us to do the same.