Product Description
Tom Perrotta made his literary debut with his short story collection Bad Haircut, earning critical praise and comparisons to Salinger, Carver, and Roth by taking readers to New Jersey in the 1970s as a boy named Buddy struggles with the timeless mysteries of sex, death, parents-and of course, bad haircuts.
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 All the little children, can you see them? ( clayface9 )
This was Tom Perrotta's first book. It is a collection of short stories. The stories are all about (and told by) a character named Buddy, who seems to be based on Perrotta himself. There are ten stories about Buddy, each occuring in a different year of his life, the first being in 1979 and the last being in 1989. The stories are funny and enjoyable, but not quite as good as his later work. If you liked his other books, you'll probably enjoy this one.
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 (three and half stars) slices of growing up ( trainreader61 )
Centered around a boy named Buddy growing up in the 70's in a middle class suburban town in New Jersey, "Bad Haircut" is probably a semi-autobiographical portrayal of memories that have stayed with Tom Perrotta, a very talented author indeed. The stories are often poignant, though most are open ended and don't have that "aha!" moment that short story writers often strive for. We learn quite a bit about Buddy and his family through these vignettes, which are only loosely connected. Don't expect, though, to be blown away, as you may have been with Perrotta's "Little Children;" but there's certainly something very enjoyable about this collection of subtle stories giving us slices of Buddy's childhood. For me, it ended all too quickly -- I would have liked to follow Buddy at least through college and perhaps through his early post-graduate days (as a struggling young writer, no doubt).
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 "I didn't realize it at the time, but that's when I was really happy." ( greg130 )
For a Perrotta devotee such as myself, Bad Haircut comes as something of a surprise. It lacks Perrotta's signature style, the acerbic wit and satirical tone that have defined his spectacular novels Election, Little Children: A Novel, and The Abstinence Teacher. It's also a difficult book to classify - too linear and structured overall to adequately call a short story collection, but too broken up into pieces to call a novel. I suppose with this, his first published work, Perrotta was still finding his footing as an author, but it is a tribute to his talent that even while exploring the range of his voice the finished product still works, and very well at that.
As I said, "Bad Haircut" isn't exactly a short story collection but isn't quite a novel. Think of it as slices from the life of a boy named Buddy, who came of age in the turbulent, disco-studded seventies. Each story is a chapter in the stages of his junior high and high school years, with book-ends from 1969 and 1980 to put a frame on the decade. We first meet Buddy as a young Boy Scout innocently star-struck when he meets the Wonderful Wiener Man, who tours the country in a hot dog costume and turns out to have a past connection to Buddy's mother (a first glimpse at the complex blend of humor and drama that imbues Perrotta's current fiction). Over the course of "Bad Haircut" Buddy loses that innocence as he makes all of the mistakes and realizations that typify the American adolescence as a segue into adulthood. In the final installment Buddy attends a funeral after finishing his first year of college, a funeral that will unexpectedly cause him to revisit the innocence of that Boy Scout we first met him as.
It would be remiss of me to say that "Bad Haircut" is more serious than Perrotta's other works, since they all pack weighty themes beneath their farcical exteriors, but it does feel that way thanks to a poetic quality that he seems to have forsaken in those later novels. At first glance "Bad Haircut" seems superficial, but Perrotta's already remarkably deft pen only makes it appear that way. Each story packs a mean punch, and the fact that they flow so easily belies the poetic - and painstaking - structure that they follow. They speak volumes about American life, not just in the seventies, but beyond. Barring the absence of cell phones and the internet, "Bad Haircut" could just as easily take place in today's world.
If I have a complaint it's that even though the stories all follow the same character, each one feels a little too distinct. Buddy seems to have a different set of friends in each story, even though they seem to take place no more than a year apart (in a few instances only a few weeks have passed). And while we get to know the people who populate Buddy's world fairly well, Buddy himself remains something of a mystery. It would almost be possible to believe that each story is about a different teenager who just happens to reside in the same geographic location as the one in the previous story. But that's really a minor complaint, and doesn't impact the quality of the stories very much in the end.
The stories in "Bad Haircut" remind me of another spectacular short story writer, Tobias Wolff - and that is a comparison I never thought I would make. I love, love, love the Perrotta with the wicked sense of humor that I have gotten to know so well, but I would actually love to see him revisit his roots and do something like this again. Maybe someday he will.
Grade: A-
PS In addition to the linked Perrotta novels above, I would also recommend checking out the aforementioned Tobias Wolff's phenomenal Back in the World: Stories. And the film adaptation of Little Children is top notch (as well it should be -- Perrotta co-wrote the screenplay).
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Man, I can relate.... ( jayster111 )
The stories in Bad Haircut take place in a small town in New Jersey during the 1970's. I grew up during that same era, in a similar small town in the same part of the country, and I can tell you that Tom Perotta really hits the mark. His descriptions are simultaneously poignant and hilarious. The small details give life to the stories.
This is certainly a "guy's" book. I'm not sure if a female who grew up in the 70's would find the same level of enjoyment in these stories.
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Boon's Farm & strange prom dates ( honeybucketman )
The writing in this collection of connected short stories is stellar. I grew up in roughly the same time period and in roughly the same location that the stories took place and Perrotta really nailed. After I finished reading BAD HAIRCUT I found myself doing something I hadn't done in a long, long time. I looked at my high school yearbook.
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