Final exam season is rapidly approaching, which means it's time to get caught up on all the stupid books you didn't read for English class this year. For anyone who was unfortunate enough to be assigned Just Hold Still by Sherman Povik (dude ought to stick to sports...), some good news: I've started transcribing the CliffsNotes for it. Here's the summary and analysis for chapter one.
(Spoilers below, I guess.)
Chapter 1: Friendly Meeting, Friendly Parting
Summary
The book begins with an unnecessary foreword. The main takeaway is that the story takes place in and before 1993, and that consequently there is no possibility of electronic communication between Pokémon trainers, whether by a mobile device or a computer in a Pokémon Center.
The main character Luke Andersen meets future romantic interest Wendy Merrick and her childhood friends Aaron Barlow and Nadine L’Enfant when they were all new ten-year-old trainers in 1988. Luke has a Drowzee named Zoe who helps him sleep at night, Wendy has a Clefairy named G-Sharp or Sharpy for short, Aaron has a Cyndaquil named Ace, and Nadine has a Sentret whose name is unimportant. Luke is an aspiring photographer and shoots a portrait of the other three and their Pokémon at Wendy’s request. Since he has to develop the film first, they agree to travel together until he can make prints in a darkroom.
The scene skips ahead to 1993, when Luke is now traveling with three different, younger trainers whose names you will not need to know for a test. He is having a farewell dinner with them, and it is implied that he left the other main characters on bad terms. He learns on the TV that Aaron is doing well in the Indigo League Championship. He doesn’t like thinking about Aaron because he hates him, and doesn’t like thinking about Wendy because he likes her. Zoe the Drowzee is now a Hypno, but will still be a Drowzee in scenes that take place before she evolved. Luke has given away all his other Pokémon because he doesn’t battle anymore and will be done as a full-time trainer when he turns sixteen sometime next year. (Note that we know from the foreword that the story will end before this point.)
A few days after leaving his friends, Luke finds a letter addressed to him that someone left at the Violet City Pokémon Center’s front desk. In this story, trainers can leave envelopes at the front desk of a Pokémon Center in case another trainer passes through that way, but cannot use the postal service to send letters to a trainer c/o a Pokémon Center for reasons unknown. (In interviews, the author has said this is because Pokémon Centers aren’t equipped to act as de facto post offices, also that the story would fall apart otherwise.) The letter turns out to be from Wendy, who briefly asks how he’s doing because she wants to reconnect. Luke agonizes briefly before deciding to write back.
Analysis
The author is very specific about years because one of the central themes of the story will be the passage of time and its effect on interpersonal relationships. The time-skip is meant to have a whiplash-like quality, leaving the reader disoriented to learn that the new trainer group just introduced has dissolved following an unpleasant incident (which at this point has been left unspecified, other than that it involved what may have been an injury to Luke’s shoulder).
While there are clues in the first chapter that the story’s eventual villain, Aaron, is a manipulative bully (notice how he seems to make Nadine uncomfortable), the general consensus is that this is meant to be ambiguous to the reader at this point. Aaron’s words and actions for most of the story can be seen as a sort of Rorschach test, where different readers may be inclined to interpret Aaron accusingly or charitably depending on their own real-life experiences (or expectations from other fictional works).
Critics in 2024 were divided by the extensive descriptions of photography in the book. In addition to judgments that they are superfluous, it has been alleged that the author received substantial undisclosed payments from both the Camdak and Mikon corporations to include specific camera models in the text. Early drafts of the book have also been discovered in which Luke’s specialty is not photography but rather painting, suggesting the entire focus on photography may have been the result of corporate sponsorship. The author denies the allegations, calling the purported drafts “elaborate hoaxes,” and claiming that he’s never listened to offers for product placement ever since the non-league North Ecruteak Gym “stiffed [him]” on payments for its prominent inclusion in Will Somebody Stop These Kids?. Students who intend to cover this controversy in their book reports should look up relevant news articles to cite as sources.
I'll try to get rest of the chapters typed up soon. Hopefully this will be enough to help you pass the first quiz if you're supposed to read chapter 1 this week.
(Oh, and April Fool's, of course.)
(Spoilers below, I guess.)
Chapter 1: Friendly Meeting, Friendly Parting
Summary
The book begins with an unnecessary foreword. The main takeaway is that the story takes place in and before 1993, and that consequently there is no possibility of electronic communication between Pokémon trainers, whether by a mobile device or a computer in a Pokémon Center.
The main character Luke Andersen meets future romantic interest Wendy Merrick and her childhood friends Aaron Barlow and Nadine L’Enfant when they were all new ten-year-old trainers in 1988. Luke has a Drowzee named Zoe who helps him sleep at night, Wendy has a Clefairy named G-Sharp or Sharpy for short, Aaron has a Cyndaquil named Ace, and Nadine has a Sentret whose name is unimportant. Luke is an aspiring photographer and shoots a portrait of the other three and their Pokémon at Wendy’s request. Since he has to develop the film first, they agree to travel together until he can make prints in a darkroom.
The scene skips ahead to 1993, when Luke is now traveling with three different, younger trainers whose names you will not need to know for a test. He is having a farewell dinner with them, and it is implied that he left the other main characters on bad terms. He learns on the TV that Aaron is doing well in the Indigo League Championship. He doesn’t like thinking about Aaron because he hates him, and doesn’t like thinking about Wendy because he likes her. Zoe the Drowzee is now a Hypno, but will still be a Drowzee in scenes that take place before she evolved. Luke has given away all his other Pokémon because he doesn’t battle anymore and will be done as a full-time trainer when he turns sixteen sometime next year. (Note that we know from the foreword that the story will end before this point.)
A few days after leaving his friends, Luke finds a letter addressed to him that someone left at the Violet City Pokémon Center’s front desk. In this story, trainers can leave envelopes at the front desk of a Pokémon Center in case another trainer passes through that way, but cannot use the postal service to send letters to a trainer c/o a Pokémon Center for reasons unknown. (In interviews, the author has said this is because Pokémon Centers aren’t equipped to act as de facto post offices, also that the story would fall apart otherwise.) The letter turns out to be from Wendy, who briefly asks how he’s doing because she wants to reconnect. Luke agonizes briefly before deciding to write back.
Analysis
The author is very specific about years because one of the central themes of the story will be the passage of time and its effect on interpersonal relationships. The time-skip is meant to have a whiplash-like quality, leaving the reader disoriented to learn that the new trainer group just introduced has dissolved following an unpleasant incident (which at this point has been left unspecified, other than that it involved what may have been an injury to Luke’s shoulder).
While there are clues in the first chapter that the story’s eventual villain, Aaron, is a manipulative bully (notice how he seems to make Nadine uncomfortable), the general consensus is that this is meant to be ambiguous to the reader at this point. Aaron’s words and actions for most of the story can be seen as a sort of Rorschach test, where different readers may be inclined to interpret Aaron accusingly or charitably depending on their own real-life experiences (or expectations from other fictional works).
Critics in 2024 were divided by the extensive descriptions of photography in the book. In addition to judgments that they are superfluous, it has been alleged that the author received substantial undisclosed payments from both the Camdak and Mikon corporations to include specific camera models in the text. Early drafts of the book have also been discovered in which Luke’s specialty is not photography but rather painting, suggesting the entire focus on photography may have been the result of corporate sponsorship. The author denies the allegations, calling the purported drafts “elaborate hoaxes,” and claiming that he’s never listened to offers for product placement ever since the non-league North Ecruteak Gym “stiffed [him]” on payments for its prominent inclusion in Will Somebody Stop These Kids?. Students who intend to cover this controversy in their book reports should look up relevant news articles to cite as sources.
I'll try to get rest of the chapters typed up soon. Hopefully this will be enough to help you pass the first quiz if you're supposed to read chapter 1 this week.
(Oh, and April Fool's, of course.)
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