Book Review: Goat, A Memoir

Goat: A Memoir tells the story of Brad Land and his exceedingly depressing story of life. Described by Amazon.com as Land’s experiences with a mugging and eventual pledgeship with the Kappa Sigma fraternity at Clemson University.

The book begins with Brad and his brother Brett enjoying a party in their hometown. Brad leaves, taking two strangers who needed a ride with him. As they direct him to where they’re going, Brad winds up in the middle of nowhere. The two men beat him mercilessly and leave him to die in some backwoods farm country. Of the 224 pages, this story sucks up roughly 60 pages.

During Brad’s recovery, his brother Brett leaves for Clemson University. Brad inevitably decides he wants to go to and joins Brett a semester later. Throughout this time, Brad paints himself as a damaged, eclectic young man. I found it extremely hard to relate to his own social ineptitude and obsessive-compulsive ways (ie, he saves everything in his pockets to the extent that they bulge with what is essentially trash).

Anyway, Brad decides to join the same fraternity as his brother Brett in a vain attempt to a.) be closer to his brother and b.) be happy in life. The problem with this is that Brad has already shown us that him and his brother are very close (Brett tried to find Brad’s muggers and kill them) and his definition of “happy” is apparently making out with random bar sluts.

As the “story” progresses, Brad deals with two separate “hazing” events. One of these involves excessive drinking while the other sees our anti-hero running a gauntlet of Kappas that shove him back and forth. Being a fraternity man myself, I can tell you that these are pretty benign instances of hazing. Trust me.

Nowhere in the story does Brad discuss what Kappa stands for. He basically paints them as sadistic assholes though he never really mentions any other forms of hazing for the remainder of the book. The author also fails to accurately describe what the fraternal experience is like. He spends the majority of the book talking about how odd him and his brother are. For instance, Brett enjoys staring at the wall and driving on the highway late at night for no reason.

Brad eventually has a breakdown and drops out of the fraternity. The last 50 pages or so deal with him feeling awkward whenever he sees a Kappa brother and yearning to have finished pledgeship: “I realized that, at this point, if I’d stayed in, I would only be two weeks away from Initiation.”

I guess I should also mention that I know this review isn’t one of my best. I was basically pretty disgusted and forced myself to write something about this atrocity pretending to be a book. I’m dumbfounded how this has 4.5 stars on Amazon. Brad Land is obviously a socially mal-adjusted young man and fraternity life was never going to be for him. This memoir is a pathetic attempt at feeling self-righteous and adding unnecessary fuel to the anti-fraternity fire.

Avoid this travesty at all costs.

-Chad 2

Currently Reading:
Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica

On Deck:
Scratch Beginnings by Adam W. Shepard