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Tracy Flick Can’t Win: A Novel
Tom Perrotta
By
Published: Aug 02, 2022
Category:
Fiction
Tom Perotta, a freshly minted graduate of a creative writing graduate program, had an idea for a novel: “a tight-knit working-class family wins the lottery and proceeds to fall apart.” After 40 publishers rejected it, he decided to write a second novel. That book would be “short and tight, a narrative that gathered energy as it went along, and propelled the reader to an exciting conclusion.”
That book was “Election.” It’s about three teenagers who are campaigning for election as President of Winwood High School. Admit it. You didn’t read the book. You saw the movie with Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick and Matthew Broderick as the English teacher who is, briefly her lover.
Funny how time changes our views. In 1999, when the movie was released, did you gasp at the crime committed — a teacher having sex with an underage student? You didn’t. You thought: Tracy Flick will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
Tom Perotta: “Tracy had a sexual relationship with her teacher and she was very adamant that she was not to be thought of as a victim, that she did what she wanted when she wanted. When she no longer wanted to do it, she stopped. But her narrative was, I did this thing, I realized it was a mistake, I stopped, let’s move on — let me get elected president, let me get my scholarship, let me go to law school and become a politician. She had a plan and being a victim wasn’t part of that plan.”
And now she’s back.
Why? “I was responding to the world’s interest in Tracy,” Perrotta says. “Reese Witherspoon brought that character to life, and in the 20 years since the movie, she’s become a kind of shorthand for an ambitious woman in America, the idea of a feminist girl who is ambitious for herself, with some of the flaws ambitious men have.”
In “In Tracy Flick Can’t Win,” the character wants to use what she’s learned to tell the story straight. “I desperately wanted to go back in time, to find the girl I used to be and tell her how sorry I was for letting her down,” she says, “that fierce young woman who never had a chance, the one who got crushed.”
She’s speaking literally. She’s not the first woman president. Her mother got MS, she dropped out of law school, and was mired in low level jobs until she got her Ph.D. and started teaching. She has a child, but no husband. She’s ascended just this far: she’s an assistant principal, and a good one. But she’s topped out.
And then — how often does this happen? Answer: like, almost never — she gets a second chance at the brass ring. The principal job’s becomes available. She’s the obvious successor. She’s longer living in a slog of dull acceptance. She’s got a dream. [To read an excerpt, click here. To buy the novel from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
There’s a lot of suburban life along the way, and outsized characters who are outsized only because they live in a small town where modest eccentrics are treated like borderline celebrities. The pages turn quickly, In a matter of hours, you’ll know Tracy’s fate. Hint: don’t bother guessing the ending.
The brashness in her personality and her sexuality? Gone. And not missed. She knows that the culture has changed, and it would be more favorable to her now. But we don’t get do-overs. As Perotta says, “The cultural attitude is so different. Twenty five years later we see Tracy as completely damaged.”
That last line — “completely damaged” — chills me. Tracy Flick, once so exceptional, once a symbol, is now like so many of us: a survivor who gets up every morning and tries to make something of the day that she can be proud of.
