Product Description

Here is the bestselling novel about growing up before free sex, Vietnam and AIDS. A "wildly sexy novel (that) isn't a sex novel".--Kurt Vonnegut.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1063306 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Growing Up In America
I first read Going All the Way in a lit class called "Growing Up In America" at prep school, in 1974. The book was only a few years old then, and it was assigned along with other fine works like The Sound and the Fury, Member of the Wedding, Red Sky at Morning, and The Car Thief. Going All the Way was my favorite, and remains one of my favorites today. I've reread it many times, and have greatly enjoyed reading the whole thing aloud to two different receptive audiences-of-one.

Going All the Way is funny, wise, and true. As a girl of 16, it also taught me a great deal about men, and particularly about the visceral fear most men have of women -- the degree to which they feel we have the power to define them. It is a book that entertains, educates, and enlightens, all at the same time. It doesn't get a whole lot better than that.

I went to a book signing when this edition came out, so I could meet Dan Wakefield, and tell him how much this book has meant to me. I was also very pleased with the movie, which came out literally decades after the book -- while it did, of necessity, pare the story down to the essentials, it portrayed the heart and soul of the story and the characters truly.

Don't miss Going All The Way. It may not be The Great American Novel, but it's certainly *A* Great American Novel.

Dan Wakefield CAN handle the truth!
This is one of the most pitilessly honest and funniest books you'll ever read about early adulthood -- late high school, college and just after. The sexual preoccupation. The social striving. The uncertainty about one's future. Along the way, Mr. Wakefield captures a time and a place (Indiana, early 1950s) perfectly. You could draw a straight line connecting the art of J.D. Salinger, Dan Wakefield and Nick Hornby. Thank you, Mr. Wakefield!

Captures turning points
This novel captures the underlying unease that two young men face when they return home from the Army in the early '50's. It sketches their growing perception of all the boxes and groups that they were in before they left, like the jocks, what today would called nerds, and the sorority girls.

As they go through their first summer of freedom they begin to realize that the old home town has gotten too small and confining for them, and that it is time to go see what's over the hill. They begin to realize that they do have many choices, and the freedom to pursue them, and they try to sort out what some of them are.

Along the way there are some pretty accurate and painful descriptions of the social and sexual hangups of your average Midwestern male at mid-century.

Good stuff.