the perks of being a wallflower stephen chbosky book

The idea of anonymous letters came from a real experience during his senior year in high school, Chbosky wrote an anonymous letter to Stewart Stern about how Rebel Without a Cause had influenced him. was the kid I was really trying to find.' Chbosky began writing the novel in the summer of 1996 while he was in college, finishing it two drafts later in the summer of 1998.

When he wrote the sentence, 'I guess that's just one of the perks of being a wallflower' he 'realized that somewhere in that. He was experiencing a 'bad breakup' which led him to ask, 'Why do such good people let themselves get treated so badly?' The story began when Chbosky was in school, evolving from another book on which he was working. The idea for the novel came from a difficult period in Chbosky's life. The film boosted the novel's sales, and the book reached The New York Times Best Seller list. In 2012, he adapted and directed a film version starring Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller and Emma Watson. Chbosky makes several references to other literary works, films and pop culture in general.Īlthough Chbosky's first book was a commercial success, it was banned in some American schools for its content and received mixed reviews from literary critics. The novel addresses themes permeating adolescence, including introversion, sexuality and drug use. Intelligent beyond his years, he is an unconventional thinker as the story begins, the reader learns that Charlie is also shy and unpopular.Ĭhbosky took five years to develop and publish The Perks of Being a Wallflower, creating the characters and other aspects of the story from his own memories. Set in the early 1990s, the novel follows Charlie through his freshman year of high school in a Pittsburgh suburb.

Its narrator is an introverted teenager known as Charlie, who describes his experiences in a series of letters to an anonymous stranger. The Perks of Being a Wallflower The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming-of-age epistolary novel by American writer Stephen Chbosky which was first published on Februby Pocket Books.

For the film of the same name, see The Perks of Being a Wallflower (film).

The perks of being a wallflower stephen chbosky book