What do you think?
Rate this book
Idiot Boys: a memoir
In telling the story of his own accidental “coming of age,” English professor Bradley Butterfield tells the stories of a whole cast of lovable, if fallible, characters from his childhood and of the Denver he grew up in from the dawn of disco to the Reagan era. IDIOT BOYS is a relentlessly funny, heartbreakingly sad, and ultimately philosophical look at the particular idiocy of boys and the universal stupidity of man. Each chapter, or “Exhibit,” represents a rough archetype of idiot boy behavior and a stage in young Butterfield’s quixotic quest to figure himself out and become the hero of his own movie. Butterfield’s narration meanders between every phase of his youth, from pre-school to his first semester in college, but there turns out to be a method in this seeming madness as it builds to a gut-wrenching climax involving repressed memories surrounding his mother’s death and the inevitable dissolution of those childhood friendships he thought would last forever.
300 pages, Paperback
Published October 20, 2015
About the author
Bradley Butterfield
1 book3 followersBradley Butterfield is a happily married father of two little girls, and an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where he teaches a wide variety of courses on Western literature and philosophy from the Enlightenment to the present. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon and an MA in European Studies from the Claremont Graduate School, and has published several essays on Critical Theory and 20th-century fiction, but his primary obsession for the last several years has been the writing of his childhood memoir, Idiot Boys. He is presently working on its sequel.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 24, 2015
Sit down, buckle in and brace yourself for a roller coaster ride of glorious young male idiocy, Butterfield's chronicles of his youthful antics are more than a collection of empty Jackass episodes; his clear, no-nonsense writing is a nostalgic and thoughtful exploration of how many young males in the West have to survive their chaotic youth in order to understand their adult selves. What really makes Idiot Boys a joy ride, however, is Butterfield'd penetrating sense of the absurd coupled with his overriding compassion for everything human.
January 25, 2019
This is a great book by a fantastic storyteller. I seriously want to read more and hope he publishes many more. I took three amazing comp lit classes from him at the University of Oregon and he always had great stories he shared. I told a friend I would let her read after me and I bought another copy so she could keep one as well.
February 6, 2022
A very funny book! Not for the just-say-no crowd that's for sure! The idiot boys might have lived by « just-say-yes and pay the consequences later ». The "fear and loathing" they face never gets them down. I especially loved the way Brad laughs at his own sillyness time and again. He might be sad at times and we feel for him but mainly the stories are humorous. I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews