Election (1998) by Tom Perotta

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Election (1998)

by Tom Perotta

Winwood, New Jersey

New Jersey: 2/13

     Election is an interesting novel- the publication rights were sold before publication, and the movie was actually shot and completed before the novel was published.  The novel was published to muted acclaim but the film was a hit and also the second (after Citizen Ruth) in a run of films that would establish Payne as a notable filmmaker of his generation.  In fact, given the sequence of events, with the book being sold for film before publication and the film debuting while the book was still on shelves, a year after the book was published, it is fair game to just say that, like the Godfather by Mario Puzo, the movie is simply better than the book.

   The irony of that sequence in the context of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is that the biggest change Payne made, besides adding a scene of Matthew Broderick getting off to pornography in his basement, is moving the location of the novel from New Jersey to Nebraska.  In that sense, specifically,  the book and movie are totally different.  

 

    Election is a particular kind of literary fiction, the "comic novel," that manages to occupy  a rung below "serious" literary fiction but above genre fiction.  Less, the 2017 novel by Andrew Sean Greer, is an example of this category that received a major literary award (2018 Pulitzer) though you'd be hard to find many on the Booker Shortlist (and some on the Longlist).  Similarly you'd have to go back to never to find a comic novel on the National Book Award for Fiction winners list.  Perotta is clearly aiming at a target beyond the tawdry facts of his tale about the manipulation of a Student Body President election at a nothing-interesting suburban public high school.  Provided you know the underlying history, it's impossible not to consider the influence of the Bush-Gore election dispute- which happened a couple years AFTER Election was published and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, which happened a couple years BEFORE Election was published. 

 I was reminded while I was writing this post that Perotta actually published a sequel to Election a couple years ago and the Amazon Product Page tells me it's soon to be a major motion picture starring Reese Witherspoon. 

  It's hard to contemplate a time when Reese Witherspoon had some edge, but the movie trilogy of Election along with Freeway (1996) and her turn in American Psycho (2000) remind us all that there was a time before Legally Blond. 

    Listening to the excellent Audiobook edition in 2024, it is also fair to observe that Election stands up a generation later as a more-or-less timeless morality tale and you don't have to know the contemporary history to appreciate the tale.