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Where the Boys Are
Signet/D1890 MGM Movie Tie-In Paperback-1st Edition-160 pages-1960. Glendon Swarthout.
160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
About the author
Glendon Swarthout
51 books100 followersGlendon Fred Swarthout was an American writer. Some of his best known novels were made into films of the same title, Where the Boys Are, The Shootist and They Came To Cordura.
Also wrote under Glendon Fred Swarthout. Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glendon_...
Also wrote under Glendon Fred Swarthout. Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glendon_...
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 17, 2020
Review of WHERE THE BOYS ARE
Why do they come to Florida? Physically, to get a tan. The weather up north is simply unknown that time of year; snow and slush and cold and Gothic; the perfect climate for exams and suicide. Also, they are pooped. Many have mono.
Merrit Andrews is a mess physically, intellectually and emotionally. She has a well cultivated list of pet peeves that includes "Greek shipping tycoons, the complete cast of the Mickey Mouse Club, the premiers of Russian satellites, Texas oil men, presidents and faculties of state universities, missile count-downers and button-pushers," and many more besides. She is behind in all her courses, suffers from a bad cold or possibly mono, and has just smarted off to the teacher of a repressive “courtship and marriage” course about the irrelevance of virginity before wedlock. After a one-last-warning meeting with the freshman dean, she grabs her best gal pal Tuggle and they flee Michigan State to drive down to Fort Lauderdale (Florida) for Spring Break, 1958.
And thus Glendon Swartout, author of The Shootist and Bless the Beasts and Children, gave us his most successful book, a 1960 tribute to the mixed joys of tangling with an “adult, heterosexual environment” head-on. (The novel was originally going to be called Unholy Spring.) I respect the prior reviewers who downgraded this book because of the amount of binge-drinking, promiscuity and date rape in it even though those attributes of post-adolescents on a "spree" are still problems sixty years later. However, Merrit's good, clear, sarcastic (and first-person) voice redeems features of the book that were hard to duplicate in the delightful but different 1960 MGM ensemble movie with Dolores Hart, George Hamilton and Paula Prentiss.
Merrit is no fool, and no pushover to campus fads and foibles:
I abhor the whole concept of cool, though, in jazz or human endeavor or anything. If man had not burned for a few things he would still be grunting about in cool caves. Casual is okay, though.
It's important to understand that, beneath the engaging satire, Merrit's concerns (and those of most other characters in the novel) have at least as much to do with "life-adjustment" as with suds and sex. She is plenty smart enough to understand that an educational establishment and a society that preach competition but urge conformity are on the road to confusion. This causes problems for highly intelligent youth, who are most of the cast of this book. Let's hear it from "TV," a student so smart and unscrupulous that he has developed a successful side-hustle selling psychological tests for big bucks:
Recruiting brains today is so big it’s damn near a matter of logistics. But, and here’s the kick, they don’t want brains. A high IQ is worse than bad breath. Grades count, sure, and activities, but the clincher is the personality. So they give these seniors a test to take home to fill out and tell them what the company is most interested in is how well a guy will groove, how well he’ll adjust to the job and the togetherness; in other words, can he disappear without a trace into a department.
We can see why guys like "TV" have trouble settling into one particular campus -- but also how his nimbleness presages the nonconformist decade at hand.
This theme of playing dumb even shows up in a song, "The Curse of a High IQ," written by the character who shows up as the "purveyor of [West Coast] Dialectic Jazz" in the movie:
Those with a mind,
Will find,
That ignorance is bliss,
So here’s a clue:
If you want to be molested --
Keep your intelligence arrested!
From high school to the hearse --
For a girl there’s nothing worse --
Than the curse of a high IQ!
There's more going on -- a surprising amount for such a short novel -- including an abortive revolution that also presages the Sixties. On the whole, time spent reading Where the Boys Are is time well spent. Just don't expect it to mirror the charming movie. Happily, Amazon's Kindle version has taken this sixty-year-old satire out of the curio closet and put it back in our hands.
Why do they come to Florida? Physically, to get a tan. The weather up north is simply unknown that time of year; snow and slush and cold and Gothic; the perfect climate for exams and suicide. Also, they are pooped. Many have mono.
Merrit Andrews is a mess physically, intellectually and emotionally. She has a well cultivated list of pet peeves that includes "Greek shipping tycoons, the complete cast of the Mickey Mouse Club, the premiers of Russian satellites, Texas oil men, presidents and faculties of state universities, missile count-downers and button-pushers," and many more besides. She is behind in all her courses, suffers from a bad cold or possibly mono, and has just smarted off to the teacher of a repressive “courtship and marriage” course about the irrelevance of virginity before wedlock. After a one-last-warning meeting with the freshman dean, she grabs her best gal pal Tuggle and they flee Michigan State to drive down to Fort Lauderdale (Florida) for Spring Break, 1958.
And thus Glendon Swartout, author of The Shootist and Bless the Beasts and Children, gave us his most successful book, a 1960 tribute to the mixed joys of tangling with an “adult, heterosexual environment” head-on. (The novel was originally going to be called Unholy Spring.) I respect the prior reviewers who downgraded this book because of the amount of binge-drinking, promiscuity and date rape in it even though those attributes of post-adolescents on a "spree" are still problems sixty years later. However, Merrit's good, clear, sarcastic (and first-person) voice redeems features of the book that were hard to duplicate in the delightful but different 1960 MGM ensemble movie with Dolores Hart, George Hamilton and Paula Prentiss.
Merrit is no fool, and no pushover to campus fads and foibles:
I abhor the whole concept of cool, though, in jazz or human endeavor or anything. If man had not burned for a few things he would still be grunting about in cool caves. Casual is okay, though.
It's important to understand that, beneath the engaging satire, Merrit's concerns (and those of most other characters in the novel) have at least as much to do with "life-adjustment" as with suds and sex. She is plenty smart enough to understand that an educational establishment and a society that preach competition but urge conformity are on the road to confusion. This causes problems for highly intelligent youth, who are most of the cast of this book. Let's hear it from "TV," a student so smart and unscrupulous that he has developed a successful side-hustle selling psychological tests for big bucks:
Recruiting brains today is so big it’s damn near a matter of logistics. But, and here’s the kick, they don’t want brains. A high IQ is worse than bad breath. Grades count, sure, and activities, but the clincher is the personality. So they give these seniors a test to take home to fill out and tell them what the company is most interested in is how well a guy will groove, how well he’ll adjust to the job and the togetherness; in other words, can he disappear without a trace into a department.
We can see why guys like "TV" have trouble settling into one particular campus -- but also how his nimbleness presages the nonconformist decade at hand.
This theme of playing dumb even shows up in a song, "The Curse of a High IQ," written by the character who shows up as the "purveyor of [West Coast] Dialectic Jazz" in the movie:
Those with a mind,
Will find,
That ignorance is bliss,
So here’s a clue:
If you want to be molested --
Keep your intelligence arrested!
From high school to the hearse --
For a girl there’s nothing worse --
Than the curse of a high IQ!
There's more going on -- a surprising amount for such a short novel -- including an abortive revolution that also presages the Sixties. On the whole, time spent reading Where the Boys Are is time well spent. Just don't expect it to mirror the charming movie. Happily, Amazon's Kindle version has taken this sixty-year-old satire out of the curio closet and put it back in our hands.
January 29, 2012
I have to disagree strongly with the reviewers who said that thid book is 'dated' (Is 'Romeo and Juliet dated?), or about the '60s. This book should be read as being about the end of the '50s era. It captures the cultural changes that ushered in the '60s well, and is much deeper than the movie, although that is a guity pleasure.
June 19, 2014
Dated? I beg to differ. Except for the novel's ending in which these drunken collegians overload Ryder's uncle's fancy yacht with guns and ammunition to motor to Cuba to help Fidel Castro's pre-Communist revolution to overthrow the Dictator Batista, but manage to sink it in the Lauderdale yacht basin before ever making it offshore. The book's dialogue and crazy situations these students get into on spring break, plus the descriptions of life on campus at Big Ten Michigan State are still LOL hilarious. Give this bestseller a 2nd Chance!
Professor Glendon Swarthout took off with a bunch of his English Honors students from Michigan State University as they motored south from the winter's chill to the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to soak up some sun, sand, suds, and sex. What he found there during a long week of "field research," became the basis of one of the funniest collegiate novels of all time. But let's leave it to the narrator, Merritt Blake, who describes herself as 5'9" in heels, weighing in at 136 lbs. "My statistics are 37-28-38. I wear an 8 1/2B shoe. I may not be feminine but I am damn ample. We all are. It is ridiculous nowadays for girls to be seductive. Companies go on about advertising creams and mists and gossamer underthings when what we should really be in the market for is stuff like electric razors and Charles Atlas courses and jockstraps."
Merritt further describes what her book is about-- "Why do college kids come to Florida? Physically to get a tan. Also, they are pooped. Many have mononucleosis. Psychologically, to get away. And besides, what else is there to do except to go home (for spring break) and further foul up the child-parent relationship. Biologically they come to Florida to check the talent. You've seen those movie travelogues of the beaches of the Pribilof Islands where the seals tool in once a year to pair off and reproduce. The beach at Lauderdale has a similar function. Not that reproduction occurs, of course, but when you attract thousands of kids to one place there is apt to be a smattering of sexual activity."
Where The Boys Are was much more than a novel, it became a national phenomenon! And a New York Times bestseller which was well-reviewed in almost every national publication, who then sent their reporters down to south Florida the next spring break to cover this annual college pilgrimage and beach bash they'd somehow overlooked. MGM quickly snapped up the film rights to Boys and turned it into the biggest grossing, low-budget film in the history of that fabled movie studio. And that really set off the media stampede. In 1961 came the student riots in Lauderdale when the city fathers banned students from staying on the city beaches after dark and arrested a lot more students for underage drinking and loitering downtown, where the kids lingered at night with nothing organized for them to do. Meanwhile, Connie Francis's theme song became her biggest selling single record; the novel and film became the Grandmother of all the week-long MTV Live Spring Breaks to follow, not to mention a skin parade of cheaper "Beach Pictures" in later years. Palm Springs Weekend anyone?
Countless college memories were made from this classic. Just try and get through any chapter without LOL. Where The Boys Are was a Book-of-the-Month-Club main selection.
More information about the writing Swarthouts, all the adult novels and YA novellas, as well as movie trailers from the 9 films made from these stories, plus screenplays (originals and adaptations), are all posted on their literary website -- www.glendonswarthout.com
Book Reviews --
"This brilliantly funny novel is not recommended to lovers of Florida, parents of college-age daughters, devotees of conservative prose style and Yale men. But virtually everyone else will enjoy it. Do you recall Margaret Mead's famous anthropological study, Coming of Age in Samoa? Well, this is Coming of Age in Florida, -- with complex initiation rites, ceremonial costumes, nocturnal festivals, fertility dances and all. The important difference is that Florida is far funnier than Samoa. The moral of the book is best summed up by the slogan which was once displayed by a Florida real estate dealer: Get Lots While You Are Young!"
Gilbert Highet, Book of the Month Club News
"Swarthout's mastery of the contemporary college argot is complete, and he apparently knows what students think and feel. This quite possibly will be the funniet new book by an American this year. In fact, Swarthout may be the long sought new major American humorist. Like most major humorists, he has a sense of social satire."
Kansas City Star
"A comical and exuberantly exaggerated investigation of a subject most parents prefer not to think about." Time magazine
"A perceptive comic novel...both good comedy and first-rate social anthropology. Merritt, the Midwestern co-ed narrator, is funny and appealing." the Saturday Review of Literature
"The girl narrator of Swarthout's story is a sensitive and knowing, if highly unstrung young woman, and this story is a striking one." Newsweek
"Where The Boys Are is a savage, brilliant, screamingly funny satire." Diana Gillon, the Sunday Times of London
"The author of the serious They Came To Cordura has written a funny, shocking, weirdly different novel that mirrors with devastating accuracy the thinking and mores of this younger generation... Swarthout's prose is fantastically readable. He has his people doing oddball things, spouting ridiculous beliefs, engaging in immoral frivolities, but the reader is caught up in the excitement, loving every word, every situation, every delicious piece of dialogue."
Bob Powers, Huntington, West Virginia Herald-Advertiser
Professor Glendon Swarthout took off with a bunch of his English Honors students from Michigan State University as they motored south from the winter's chill to the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to soak up some sun, sand, suds, and sex. What he found there during a long week of "field research," became the basis of one of the funniest collegiate novels of all time. But let's leave it to the narrator, Merritt Blake, who describes herself as 5'9" in heels, weighing in at 136 lbs. "My statistics are 37-28-38. I wear an 8 1/2B shoe. I may not be feminine but I am damn ample. We all are. It is ridiculous nowadays for girls to be seductive. Companies go on about advertising creams and mists and gossamer underthings when what we should really be in the market for is stuff like electric razors and Charles Atlas courses and jockstraps."
Merritt further describes what her book is about-- "Why do college kids come to Florida? Physically to get a tan. Also, they are pooped. Many have mononucleosis. Psychologically, to get away. And besides, what else is there to do except to go home (for spring break) and further foul up the child-parent relationship. Biologically they come to Florida to check the talent. You've seen those movie travelogues of the beaches of the Pribilof Islands where the seals tool in once a year to pair off and reproduce. The beach at Lauderdale has a similar function. Not that reproduction occurs, of course, but when you attract thousands of kids to one place there is apt to be a smattering of sexual activity."
Where The Boys Are was much more than a novel, it became a national phenomenon! And a New York Times bestseller which was well-reviewed in almost every national publication, who then sent their reporters down to south Florida the next spring break to cover this annual college pilgrimage and beach bash they'd somehow overlooked. MGM quickly snapped up the film rights to Boys and turned it into the biggest grossing, low-budget film in the history of that fabled movie studio. And that really set off the media stampede. In 1961 came the student riots in Lauderdale when the city fathers banned students from staying on the city beaches after dark and arrested a lot more students for underage drinking and loitering downtown, where the kids lingered at night with nothing organized for them to do. Meanwhile, Connie Francis's theme song became her biggest selling single record; the novel and film became the Grandmother of all the week-long MTV Live Spring Breaks to follow, not to mention a skin parade of cheaper "Beach Pictures" in later years. Palm Springs Weekend anyone?
Countless college memories were made from this classic. Just try and get through any chapter without LOL. Where The Boys Are was a Book-of-the-Month-Club main selection.
More information about the writing Swarthouts, all the adult novels and YA novellas, as well as movie trailers from the 9 films made from these stories, plus screenplays (originals and adaptations), are all posted on their literary website -- www.glendonswarthout.com
Book Reviews --
"This brilliantly funny novel is not recommended to lovers of Florida, parents of college-age daughters, devotees of conservative prose style and Yale men. But virtually everyone else will enjoy it. Do you recall Margaret Mead's famous anthropological study, Coming of Age in Samoa? Well, this is Coming of Age in Florida, -- with complex initiation rites, ceremonial costumes, nocturnal festivals, fertility dances and all. The important difference is that Florida is far funnier than Samoa. The moral of the book is best summed up by the slogan which was once displayed by a Florida real estate dealer: Get Lots While You Are Young!"
Gilbert Highet, Book of the Month Club News
"Swarthout's mastery of the contemporary college argot is complete, and he apparently knows what students think and feel. This quite possibly will be the funniet new book by an American this year. In fact, Swarthout may be the long sought new major American humorist. Like most major humorists, he has a sense of social satire."
Kansas City Star
"A comical and exuberantly exaggerated investigation of a subject most parents prefer not to think about." Time magazine
"A perceptive comic novel...both good comedy and first-rate social anthropology. Merritt, the Midwestern co-ed narrator, is funny and appealing." the Saturday Review of Literature
"The girl narrator of Swarthout's story is a sensitive and knowing, if highly unstrung young woman, and this story is a striking one." Newsweek
"Where The Boys Are is a savage, brilliant, screamingly funny satire." Diana Gillon, the Sunday Times of London
"The author of the serious They Came To Cordura has written a funny, shocking, weirdly different novel that mirrors with devastating accuracy the thinking and mores of this younger generation... Swarthout's prose is fantastically readable. He has his people doing oddball things, spouting ridiculous beliefs, engaging in immoral frivolities, but the reader is caught up in the excitement, loving every word, every situation, every delicious piece of dialogue."
Bob Powers, Huntington, West Virginia Herald-Advertiser
July 31, 2008
This is one of my favorite movies of all time, but I cannot recommend the book. It's one of those rare cases where the movie is better than the book. Much of the dialog comes straight from the book, but the screenwriter completely rearranged it to come up with a different (and better) story. It's fun enough to pick up and read a section or two, but it's not good. Not even bad-good. The movie on the other hand, is highly recommended (the original, not the remake from the 80s. Stay far far away from that one).
November 23, 2025
está anticuado de cojones, pero entretenida he estado un rato. es como mamma mia, pero con eventos históricos y opiniones políticas.
(lo compré por un euro en una tiendecita de segona mà con carmen, y se lo he anotado así coqueto tal 😼🙏🏻)
(lo compré por un euro en una tiendecita de segona mà con carmen, y se lo he anotado así coqueto tal 😼🙏🏻)
February 11, 2024
Los universitarios, en vacaciones, se juntan en una población de EEUU y se dedican a toda clase de actividades lúdicas, revolucionarias y amatorias, que unas veces acaban bien y otras no.
March 9, 2019
What The Heck!!!
August 23, 2020
There was so much wrong with this book, I don't know where to begin. It may have been fine for people in the sixties, but now it's nothing more than the smarmy wish fulfillment of a writer who plants himself into the mind of women, proceeds to write the worst stereotypes, picturing them all as naive and mindless, unable to resist the charms of any man, and falling in love at first sight.
The women in this story want nothing more than to nab a rich college dude and get his ring on their finger. The author turns them all into nothing more than duddering fools, who can be sweet talked into dropping their drawers at the drop of a hat. Two of the characters, the main one being Merritt, go off and have sex with a guy who has already admitted to raping a girl, but supposedly made it okay because he sent her a color TV. "Oh, you raped someone? Let's have sex" Not an actual quote from the book but it amounts to the same thing.
Later on, another girl is gang raped and it's partly made to be her fault because she slept with three different guys so basically she must have been asking to be filled with liquor, and violated without her consent over and over again. This is the conclusion drawn by Swarthout's altar ego Merritt, that because she too had sex with three different guys she had possibly put herself into the same position.
All the men in this novel come out unscathed, despite the fact that none of them have one single admirable quality. And the ending? I won't spoil it for you except to say that once again, the woman pays the consequences for daring to have sex while the men go on their merry way. Give me a break.
I didn't expect the book to be like the movie (which has a few of its own problems but is at least entertaining), but the fact that they got that movie out of this book is a credit to the producers and screenwriters who dumped most of the self serving wish fulfillment of the author. It was a slog to get through and my advice is if you're going to read books that were turned into movies, go elsewhere.
The women in this story want nothing more than to nab a rich college dude and get his ring on their finger. The author turns them all into nothing more than duddering fools, who can be sweet talked into dropping their drawers at the drop of a hat. Two of the characters, the main one being Merritt, go off and have sex with a guy who has already admitted to raping a girl, but supposedly made it okay because he sent her a color TV. "Oh, you raped someone? Let's have sex" Not an actual quote from the book but it amounts to the same thing.
Later on, another girl is gang raped and it's partly made to be her fault because she slept with three different guys so basically she must have been asking to be filled with liquor, and violated without her consent over and over again. This is the conclusion drawn by Swarthout's altar ego Merritt, that because she too had sex with three different guys she had possibly put herself into the same position.
All the men in this novel come out unscathed, despite the fact that none of them have one single admirable quality. And the ending? I won't spoil it for you except to say that once again, the woman pays the consequences for daring to have sex while the men go on their merry way. Give me a break.
I didn't expect the book to be like the movie (which has a few of its own problems but is at least entertaining), but the fact that they got that movie out of this book is a credit to the producers and screenwriters who dumped most of the self serving wish fulfillment of the author. It was a slog to get through and my advice is if you're going to read books that were turned into movies, go elsewhere.
September 22, 2015
Where the Boys Are by Glendon Swarthout (Random House 1960)(Fiction) is one truly dated novel. This book was the basis for the screenplay of one of my favorite campy movies which was also entitled "Where the Boys Are." The story follows several midwestern college girls from the University of Michigan on their first trip to Florida over Spring Break. Fort Lauderdale is the mecca of eligible bachelors in 1958, with the highest prize of all being "an Ivy." This thing is beyond dated. When the girls first arrive in Fort Lauderdale, they locate an "apartment" with a pool (the girls have never been in a pool) for $10.00 a day. The inevitable morality play arises; I suggest you skip the book but rent the movie - it's a hoot! My rating: 2/10, finished 10/5/11.
October 24, 2008
Still perplexed about this one. T.V. Thompson confesses to Meritt that he date-raped a woman after she insulted him. Out of pity (PITY?!?), Meritt sleeps with him. And somehow this "sob-story" works its magic not just on her, but a couple of other girls. I had to read that passage over a few times to make sure I wasn't crazy. Was rape not a big deal in the sixties?
March 2, 2021
Rare occurrence where the movie is an improvement on the book. The 1st half of this was a great laugh and very enjoyable, especially for somebody from a Midwest University as this is all about those students. The 2nd half lurches onto an unbelievable and unlikeable path which I didn't really enjoy. Disappointing ending as well, but I'm glad I read it.
March 19, 2017
I finished this book over 50 years ago. I've recommended it to several skeptical friends who agreed with me. It turned me into a Swarthout fan. I recommend Loveland too.
I very much agree with reviewer Chaney, this book should be seen as a period piece of the end of the fifties. Trust me, I was there.
I very much agree with reviewer Chaney, this book should be seen as a period piece of the end of the fifties. Trust me, I was there.
August 4, 2011
I read this book after hearing it was written by a professor for MSU who was inspired by his students. I have to say that I was quite surprised that something like this was written in the time period that it was. As much as I love the MSU references, I can't say that I'd recommend this book to many people.
December 27, 2023
I thought this was a bizarre story of college kids spending their Easter break in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, drinking, rape, and the ultimate goal for some – marriage. Working on a tan? That is to catch the attention of the opposite sex. Drinking? Proving adulthood. Come to think of it, it is a poignant satire of youth in the late 1950s.
December 25, 2014
I'm not a fan of first person narration when it's potholed with author intrusions. I get that the fictional narrator was not a great writer but this strikes me as a cop out. I'm surprised that the sexual revolution seemed to have kicked off well before the sixties at least on college campuses.
August 30, 2016
I felt like I was reading a book about a Gidget movie. While not bad, not what I wanted. I gave up after 50 pages.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews