Are you experienced? door William Sutcliffe

1. Summarize the story Once upon a time, 19-year-old college boy David meets Liz, the girlfriend of his best mate, James. Because school was over and everyone still had a couple of months before it started again, they all decided to go on holiday. Except for Liz and David; they stayed home. But David really wanted to see her again so he called her to ask if she would like to go out with him, and then they decided to go on holiday to India together. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that great between David and Liz; she meets Jeremy at a motel and doesn’t care about David. Jeremy is addicted to dope, and after they all smoked a joint, David ends up in bed with Liz. Unfortunately for him, she says she doesn’t want to have sex with him, because she still loves James. A couple of days later, David and Liz are walking around in India, and suddenly she sees an old friend of her, Fiona (or Fee) together with her girlfriend Caroline (or Caz). After a while they start to talk about meditation and suddenly Liz says that her Karma has improved. David freaks out and says: “Why don’t the three of you get a life?” From that moment on, David had done it with Liz, and she moves in with Fee and Caz. A couple of days later, Liz tells him that she’s going to a place to meditate for 2 weeks, together with Fee and Caz; so David ends up all alone. He decides to go and explore the city, but apparently he’s in the same bus as the 3 girls. Liz is mad and tells him that she will call the police when he keeps following them. After a couple of days, he gets ill and finds out that he has diarrhoea. David hears someone in the hallway and yells for help. The man, Igor, comes to the rescue and says him that he doesn’t have to be afraid; it is only diarrhoea. Then he meets Ranj again, a rich Indian they met in the beginning of their trip. Ranj had had troubles with his family, and now he had stolen money from his uncle, and when he will have spent it all, he’ll go back to there and apologize to his uncle. Ranj asks David if he’s willing to go with him to Trivandium, to spend his money; off course he agrees. When they got there, they started buying clothes and looking for girls. Suddenly they notice 2 girls looking like dead on the beach; Fee and Caz. Fee tells him that Liz has met someone, named Ping, and he convinced her to meditate by having sex. She also says that Caz has had a collapse, which is why she’s looking like dead. A few hours later, Fee and David end up together in bed, while Caz is sitting on a chair, looking at them. Fee felt sorry for her and asked Caz if she also wanted to lye in bed. But suddenly the hotel manager comes in, sees them and forces them to leave the hotel. A couple of days later, David departs for the airport, where he meets Liz again. She looked like an albino; totally adapted to the Indian climate and culture. They start arguing about the fact that he hasn’t changed a bit, while he says he had. Finally, the two break up, hoping that they will never see each other again. While David arrived in England, everything seemed so clean, and back home his mom offered him to cook him everything he wanted, and he realises that he had the time of his life and is now a very experienced man. 2. What’s the theme? The story is about travelling as backpackers. Liz is travelling to find herself and broaden her horizons, while David is only travelling to try and get Liz into bed. ‘Are you experienced’ is their tale as they journey around meeting various people and immersing themselves into the Indian culture. It’s about sexual misadventures and the usual tourist problems (such as illness, beggars…)
3. Which point of view is used? David is the one who is telling the story, in first-person. He doesn’t know everything, he is just telling what he thinks about everything, and what other people say to him. 4. Characters a. Describe the looks of the main characters The author doesn’t tell a lot about the looks of the characters, but I’ll try. David is a 19-year-old casual dressed boy. Jeremy, on the other hand, is a little bit sloppy. Liz looks like a normal girl of her age in the beginning of the story. At the end of the story she looks like a real Indian albino; she wears Indian clothes and yells ‘peace!’ all day long. Ranj is an Indian man who likes to wear Hawaiian shirts and lemon-yellow shorts. b. Describe the nature of the main characters David is a non-adventuristic boy who likes to explore everything. He is a mamas boy, because he writes his parents emotional letters. David also isn’t very subtle. Liz is a girl who doesn’t really know what she wants, that’s why she went to India; to find herself. Ranj is a very weird and funny man who enjoys life of the fullest. c. Do you notice an evolution in the main characters? Liz is the one who has changed the most; she has finally found herself. Before she left, she was a normal English girl, but now she wears Indian clothes, meditates and yells ‘peace!’ all day long. David has also changed; he learned how to spend his time and how to continue what he’s doing. d. What problems are they confronted with? Are these problems solved? At first, there is the difference between David and Liz, which is why they cannot hang out together. This is an unsolved problem, because at the end of the story, they both hope to never see each other again. David has also had a problem; diarrhoea. He was very sick the first week of his illness, but after that, he just had a little bit of problems with walking. Fortunately he was cured after a couple of days.
5. Time When do the events take place? I think it all happens during the nineties, because there isn’t proof to say that it happens during a specific period in history. Also because David wears Levi’s pants, which was very casual and modern during the nineties. 6. Setting a. Where is the story mainly situated? Basically in India but also in England (where Liz and David meet each other and in the plane). India: on the streets of India, in hotel rooms (also the expensive one where Ranj pays for), in the bus, at the beach and at the airport. b. Is the setting important? Not very much, the settings are very casual and logical. They haven’t got a symbolical background. 7. Style What kind of language is used? Slang: spoken language used by a particular group of youngsters: - “Who wants to get into bed with some dry-pussied uptight middleclass bitch who can’t come and won’t suck cock. I mean, for fuck’s sake. Raise your horizons a bit, man. We are looking for sex-starved divorcees with twenty years of prime shagging experience stored up in their vaginal muscles and a five-year drought which is just begging to be blasted away by the biggest fucking thunderstorm of their whole damn fucking lives!” (page 182) - “Whatever you say, you simply can’t offend me, you… you slim little piece of shit! You turd! You feeble moaning cynical pathetic pseudo-lad piss-hole fake! I hate you and I never want to see you again, you fucking arsehole! You make me sick!” (page 121) I think the lines are pretty obvious, so I won’t translate the text. 8. Appreciation Did you like the book? Why (not)? I liked the story, although I also have read better books. It’s such a pity that the beginning of the book is a little bit boring. The longer you read it, the better it gets, but unfortunately I thought it would be this way all the time, so sometimes I didn’t really pay attention to the story, which is why I missed a couple of fragments. But I still liked to read it; and I can honest say that I laughed a lot (especially with the funny absurdities and stupidities of David).