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The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie
The creator of Animal House at last tells the real story of the fraternity that inspired the iconic film -- a story far more outrageous and funny than any movie could ever capture.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
45 people are currently reading
359 people want to read
About the author
Chris Miller
170 books501 followersChris Miller teaches International History at Fletcher School at Tufts University. He is also Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Eurasia Research Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. (Source: Amazon.com)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
December 23, 2011
Why is Animal House my favorite film? The following three exchanges:
Jennings: I took this job until I finish my novel
Boone: How long ya been working on it?
Jennings: Three years
Pinto: It must be very good
Jennings: It's a piece of shit
Katy: Boone, I think I'm in love with a retard.
Boone: Is he bigger than me?
Pinto: They won't even let us enter a float in the homecoming parade.
Boone: Watch a bunch of zombies ride a pile of Kleenex down the street? Rah rah.
Well, I saw this book (written by the real life Pinto, named so because of the multi-varied hues of his member) and instantly grabbed it (book, not member). There is a sort of theme to the text, but it is mostly wrapped up with the following things: alcohol, dicks, boobs and trying to have all three appear at the same time. I have never read so many words for breasts: boobs, teats, milkbags, bazooms, gazongas, gabongas, wazoos...the list goes on and on. The characters of the house are all there, complete with debauchery and one guy who takes a jack-o-lantern, strips naked, and wraps the pumpkin around his crotch with his dick through the nose hole. Of course he goes trick or treating.
There are not many good female characters (most are hidden behind their funbags), but I suppose I expected this. Women are things in this text, things with yabos. Chased by men with tools, dicks, flagpoles; men who can projectile vomit onto a poster of Harriet Nelson. Men who hang out in a place which has a basement with a gutter along two of the walls. That's right, a gutter. At the end of parties they hose down the floor and the puke (boot in the parlance of the book), pee and god knows what else gets washed into a drain in the corner. Women tend to be ornaments to this chaos, added appendages that get in the way of the beer.
It took me a while to figure out what the book was missing when compared to the movie. It is the gleeful finger in the eye of the authority figures of the campus. The end "where are they now" segment, one of my favorite parts of the book, is quite poignant and sets off this dichotomy nicely. Many of the drunken louts who listened to Little Richard and Ruth Brown instead of Pat Boone became what Dartmouth grads in the 1960s became: lawyers, bankers, doctors. People who retired to Napa and Marin to complain about social inequality while ensconced in $1.8 million dollar houses, those 40-50 year olds that brought you the 1980s "Me" Generation, voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and thought "fiscal conservatism and social liberalism" was one A-Duke Idea for the Democratic party.
While they can act out and be "rebellious", they almost never did so much as to get thrown out. And if they did get thrown out, the buddy system of the frats and the administration would keep them afloat and back in class. Money in this book talks while bullshit walks. The main character complains about his more "beatnik" friends, and finds them shallow compared to his housemates. You see, his housemates sometimes hang out with black guys. But, they are gone after the concert is over. He bitches about a Joanie Baez concert infringing on important grab-the-boobies time. We can check out the tits on the local chick at the grocery store, but we certainly don't want her around in the morning. In other words, we can act like drunk townies (called Emmets, and never more than that) but we don't mix with them.
These are the guys that are fun at parties, telling you stories of that crazy frat house they were in where the one guy did the thing in a gorilla suit with four midgets, a fire extinguisher and a can of cheese whiz. It's funny, and we all laugh, and we all go on to the next one. But, they are the guys who are always looking back to become again what they were. Many of them have chalked up 3-4 marriages, several of them are dead due to various causes related to alcohol and drugs. I'm no prude, and I don't give a shit how many times someone has tied the knot (my grandmother was married no less than 6 times). What I don't like is living in the past, and this book is soaking in it.
Jennings: I took this job until I finish my novel
Boone: How long ya been working on it?
Jennings: Three years
Pinto: It must be very good
Jennings: It's a piece of shit
Katy: Boone, I think I'm in love with a retard.
Boone: Is he bigger than me?
Pinto: They won't even let us enter a float in the homecoming parade.
Boone: Watch a bunch of zombies ride a pile of Kleenex down the street? Rah rah.
Well, I saw this book (written by the real life Pinto, named so because of the multi-varied hues of his member) and instantly grabbed it (book, not member). There is a sort of theme to the text, but it is mostly wrapped up with the following things: alcohol, dicks, boobs and trying to have all three appear at the same time. I have never read so many words for breasts: boobs, teats, milkbags, bazooms, gazongas, gabongas, wazoos...the list goes on and on. The characters of the house are all there, complete with debauchery and one guy who takes a jack-o-lantern, strips naked, and wraps the pumpkin around his crotch with his dick through the nose hole. Of course he goes trick or treating.
There are not many good female characters (most are hidden behind their funbags), but I suppose I expected this. Women are things in this text, things with yabos. Chased by men with tools, dicks, flagpoles; men who can projectile vomit onto a poster of Harriet Nelson. Men who hang out in a place which has a basement with a gutter along two of the walls. That's right, a gutter. At the end of parties they hose down the floor and the puke (boot in the parlance of the book), pee and god knows what else gets washed into a drain in the corner. Women tend to be ornaments to this chaos, added appendages that get in the way of the beer.
It took me a while to figure out what the book was missing when compared to the movie. It is the gleeful finger in the eye of the authority figures of the campus. The end "where are they now" segment, one of my favorite parts of the book, is quite poignant and sets off this dichotomy nicely. Many of the drunken louts who listened to Little Richard and Ruth Brown instead of Pat Boone became what Dartmouth grads in the 1960s became: lawyers, bankers, doctors. People who retired to Napa and Marin to complain about social inequality while ensconced in $1.8 million dollar houses, those 40-50 year olds that brought you the 1980s "Me" Generation, voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and thought "fiscal conservatism and social liberalism" was one A-Duke Idea for the Democratic party.
While they can act out and be "rebellious", they almost never did so much as to get thrown out. And if they did get thrown out, the buddy system of the frats and the administration would keep them afloat and back in class. Money in this book talks while bullshit walks. The main character complains about his more "beatnik" friends, and finds them shallow compared to his housemates. You see, his housemates sometimes hang out with black guys. But, they are gone after the concert is over. He bitches about a Joanie Baez concert infringing on important grab-the-boobies time. We can check out the tits on the local chick at the grocery store, but we certainly don't want her around in the morning. In other words, we can act like drunk townies (called Emmets, and never more than that) but we don't mix with them.
These are the guys that are fun at parties, telling you stories of that crazy frat house they were in where the one guy did the thing in a gorilla suit with four midgets, a fire extinguisher and a can of cheese whiz. It's funny, and we all laugh, and we all go on to the next one. But, they are the guys who are always looking back to become again what they were. Many of them have chalked up 3-4 marriages, several of them are dead due to various causes related to alcohol and drugs. I'm no prude, and I don't give a shit how many times someone has tied the knot (my grandmother was married no less than 6 times). What I don't like is living in the past, and this book is soaking in it.
June 7, 2010
In the mid-70s, Chris "Pinto" Miller penned a series of semi-fictionalized accounts of his college years for the National Lampoon. These articles later became the basis for the film Animal House. Now he's written a memoir of his sophomore year in college, revealing the true story behind the film.
At this point, any fan of Animal House should be saying in a Flounder voice, "This is going to be GREAT!"
Enh. Not so much. (Warning -- if you have a weak stomach, you might want to quit reading now. Even in summary form, this book is only slightly less disgusting than Human Centipede.)
There are some interesting tidbits -- the true origin of the name "Pinto," and the fact that Michael Moriarty was a member of the evil fraternity. But overall, the book is a huge disappointment.
The major problem here is that you quickly realize that the movie was based upon a bunch of jerkwads. Something that's hilarious when John Belushi does it on screen, becomes boorish when you find out that it's based upon a real incident. For example, there's the scene in which one of the Deltas reads about a girl at a nearby college dying, and he goes over, pretending to be her boyfriend in order to get a sympathy date from her dorm-mates. This is one of the funniest sequences in the movie, as the frat brother parlays the situation into dates for all his friends. But the real frat brothers did this. They actually used a woman's death as a way to get dates. Suddenly the scene not only isn't funny, it's kinda disgusting.
To make matters worse, the film is actually toned down from the reality. The real frat brothers spent an inordinate amount of time first learning to projectile vomit, and then engaging in competitions to see who could "boot" the farthest. The fraternity initiation turns out to be an orgy of vomiting a la the Lardass Logan sequence in Stand by Me, except the brothers participate voluntarily -- the rushes proceed to a series of stations where they're told to chug beer and then perform various feats of up-chucking. At one station they're told to pull down their pants and throw-up on each others' crotches. At the final station, they're informed there will be no drinking, much to the rushes' relief. Instead, all they have to do is eat some hotdogs. But the hotdogs are frozen, and the initiates have to thaw them by placing them somewhere warm in their bodies. They're then given a jar of mayonnaise to help. Thankfully this turns out to be a bluff by the brothers just to see how far the rushes will go to get into the frat. Why anyone would ever want to join such an organization is never adequately explained.
The frat brothers also took delight in sneaking up on women at parties and peeing on their legs -- by the time the urine soaked through the pants, they had disappeared into the crowd. Yeah, these guys are awesome.
The sad part is, Miller is now almost 70, but he writes like he's still a 20-something jackass. The book might work if he offered some perspective on the antics he describes. Something like, "Okay, sneaking up on sleeping women and waving our penises in their faces is pretty despicable. We were real jerks." But as is, it's hard not to come away from the book hating these people.
At this point, any fan of Animal House should be saying in a Flounder voice, "This is going to be GREAT!"
Enh. Not so much. (Warning -- if you have a weak stomach, you might want to quit reading now. Even in summary form, this book is only slightly less disgusting than Human Centipede.)
There are some interesting tidbits -- the true origin of the name "Pinto," and the fact that Michael Moriarty was a member of the evil fraternity. But overall, the book is a huge disappointment.
The major problem here is that you quickly realize that the movie was based upon a bunch of jerkwads. Something that's hilarious when John Belushi does it on screen, becomes boorish when you find out that it's based upon a real incident. For example, there's the scene in which one of the Deltas reads about a girl at a nearby college dying, and he goes over, pretending to be her boyfriend in order to get a sympathy date from her dorm-mates. This is one of the funniest sequences in the movie, as the frat brother parlays the situation into dates for all his friends. But the real frat brothers did this. They actually used a woman's death as a way to get dates. Suddenly the scene not only isn't funny, it's kinda disgusting.
To make matters worse, the film is actually toned down from the reality. The real frat brothers spent an inordinate amount of time first learning to projectile vomit, and then engaging in competitions to see who could "boot" the farthest. The fraternity initiation turns out to be an orgy of vomiting a la the Lardass Logan sequence in Stand by Me, except the brothers participate voluntarily -- the rushes proceed to a series of stations where they're told to chug beer and then perform various feats of up-chucking. At one station they're told to pull down their pants and throw-up on each others' crotches. At the final station, they're informed there will be no drinking, much to the rushes' relief. Instead, all they have to do is eat some hotdogs. But the hotdogs are frozen, and the initiates have to thaw them by placing them somewhere warm in their bodies. They're then given a jar of mayonnaise to help. Thankfully this turns out to be a bluff by the brothers just to see how far the rushes will go to get into the frat. Why anyone would ever want to join such an organization is never adequately explained.
The frat brothers also took delight in sneaking up on women at parties and peeing on their legs -- by the time the urine soaked through the pants, they had disappeared into the crowd. Yeah, these guys are awesome.
The sad part is, Miller is now almost 70, but he writes like he's still a 20-something jackass. The book might work if he offered some perspective on the antics he describes. Something like, "Okay, sneaking up on sleeping women and waving our penises in their faces is pretty despicable. We were real jerks." But as is, it's hard not to come away from the book hating these people.
Read
November 19, 2020God this book took me way too long to read. Ultimately, though, it's because I began to grow bored with it. I was interested at first because despite the many social flaws of the movie Animal House, it manages to make me laugh despite being very, very bro heavy. So I was wondering what the real life inspiration could look like. What follows is mostly a string of drinking incidents, near death experiences, and then it has Boomer touches (which is unavoidable for the material). It also has it's fair share of slut shaming, racism, misogyny, sexism, etc. I mean, I knew what to expect but I was kind of hoping for more of a time capsule of a book than, rather...well what I got. I expected drunken escapades and frollicking but it was just so much more immature than I was honestly thinking. I was thinking of many more of that anarchic National Lampoon's attitude it was known for, and it is here and there, but less anarchy and more straight up porn in some places. I dunno. I am not the audience for this book, needless to say. The thing that got me though, in some places, was the kind of sheer love for the people in the book. I can say that, there's not a lot of hatred here nor is there a lot of sneering or even Boomer attitudes toward the youth of other generations, it's definitely infatuated with itself, and in it's myriad of issues, it doesn't feel mean spirited, definitely a product of its time mentality and the book, sure, can fly in 2006, but these days eeeeehhh it doesn't really sit well. I read it, too, for some inspiration for a college escapades Fantasy setting and ironically, It did give me some ideas but considering I struggled to finish it from September to now sorta says something. You know if this book is for you going into it, but I can't slam it too hard because, well, it knows its audience, it set out what it wanted to do and ultimately isn't trying to capture some grand sense of the universe. It's a guy reminiscing about the good ol' days and while problematic to me with my 2020 sensibilities, this book was never intended for the Millennial Reader either. Take of it as you will.
February 12, 2016
The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie by Chris Miller (Little, Brown & Co. 2006) (371.8). This is the real deal! For all those who pledged a fraternity or sorority and found it to be an experience for the ages, this book is for you. It tells the story of the author's fraternity at Dartmouth circa 1960; this was the house that served as the model for Delta Tau Chi in Animal House. Happily, most of the brothers seen in the movie are based on the author's actual fraternity brothers. For those of you who missed the Greek experience firsthand, this is the next best thing. My rating: 7.5/10, finished 2/12/2016.
February 15, 2016
Eh!
Crass and vulgar for the sake of vulgarity? Maybe/maybe not, depending from whose eyes....
Juvenileistic pranks, rude & crude....hey let's get drunk as a skunk!
This is suppose to be funnier than the movie? I think not. The boys in the movie seemed to be borderline "lovable" losers.....not so in the "real" story.
Crass and vulgar for the sake of vulgarity? Maybe/maybe not, depending from whose eyes....
Juvenileistic pranks, rude & crude....hey let's get drunk as a skunk!
This is suppose to be funnier than the movie? I think not. The boys in the movie seemed to be borderline "lovable" losers.....not so in the "real" story.
January 6, 2009
When Chris Miller returned to Dartmouth in 1959, he dreaded the upcoming rush week, during which he was expected—both by his father and by his peers—to pledge to, horror of horrors, a fraternity. Not finding anything in common with his father’s old fraternity or at any of the others he went to, he fulfilled a promise to another dorm fellow and checked out Alpha Delta Phi. The rest, as they say, is history.
The Real Animal House is a beer-soaked memoir of the fraternity that inspired the hugely successful 1978 film Animal House. Miller is the real Pinto (a character not named after the horse, the car, or the bean, as one finds out) and he introduces us to a cavalcade of wild characters—some of them, like Otter, instantly familiar, while others, like Seal, Bags, and Alby a combination that equals Belushi’s Bluto. Noticeably absent are antagonists like the Omegas and Dean Wormer—as Miller says, Dean Seymour is not and never was Dean Wormer. “Dean Wormer was Richard Nixon.”
The exploits of the fraternity given the first and only triple warning in Dartmouth history are not for the weak-stomached, the queasy, or the easily-offended. These are young men away at college and in an environment where alcohol is easily obtainable and consumed in mass quantities, and the behavior follows predictable lines. The book is filled with frank and graphic depictions of hazing, vomiting, and the stereotypical fixation of young men—sex. Also included are some truly disgusting incidents that made even this reviewer cringe—no mean feat. No apologies are made and none should be expected; for a group of students coming of age in a time when the world was about to undergo some major changes, rebelling against the stifling conformity of the fifties is the stuff of great storytelling.
The bottom line is if you love the movie, read the book. If you hated the movie, then perhaps it would be best give Chris Miller and the other Adelphians a pass.
The Real Animal House is a beer-soaked memoir of the fraternity that inspired the hugely successful 1978 film Animal House. Miller is the real Pinto (a character not named after the horse, the car, or the bean, as one finds out) and he introduces us to a cavalcade of wild characters—some of them, like Otter, instantly familiar, while others, like Seal, Bags, and Alby a combination that equals Belushi’s Bluto. Noticeably absent are antagonists like the Omegas and Dean Wormer—as Miller says, Dean Seymour is not and never was Dean Wormer. “Dean Wormer was Richard Nixon.”
The exploits of the fraternity given the first and only triple warning in Dartmouth history are not for the weak-stomached, the queasy, or the easily-offended. These are young men away at college and in an environment where alcohol is easily obtainable and consumed in mass quantities, and the behavior follows predictable lines. The book is filled with frank and graphic depictions of hazing, vomiting, and the stereotypical fixation of young men—sex. Also included are some truly disgusting incidents that made even this reviewer cringe—no mean feat. No apologies are made and none should be expected; for a group of students coming of age in a time when the world was about to undergo some major changes, rebelling against the stifling conformity of the fifties is the stuff of great storytelling.
The bottom line is if you love the movie, read the book. If you hated the movie, then perhaps it would be best give Chris Miller and the other Adelphians a pass.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 16, 2012
Extremely gross, and dragged in spots, but often hilarious. Also, Miller's heart is in it; you'll be able to tell from the "Where are they now?" section at the end.
Some aspects I especially enjoyed:
The local color regarding Hanover and the surrounding environs, and campus life at Dartmouth circa 1961. Most of this stuff obviously could not be used in the movie, which was set at the mythical Faber College in Faber PA.
Details that help flesh out some of the seemingly random scenes in the movie -- e.g., the mustard jar.
Getting to know the real-life bros behind the main characters in the movie -- Bluto, Otter, Hoover, etc.
Some aspects I especially enjoyed:
The local color regarding Hanover and the surrounding environs, and campus life at Dartmouth circa 1961. Most of this stuff obviously could not be used in the movie, which was set at the mythical Faber College in Faber PA.
Details that help flesh out some of the seemingly random scenes in the movie -- e.g., the mustard jar.
Getting to know the real-life bros behind the main characters in the movie -- Bluto, Otter, Hoover, etc.
April 26, 2014
I have been a huge fan of Chris Miller's Lampoon stories since I discovered them at sixteen, in the National Lampoon monthly magazine. A few years later the movie he wrote with Harold Ramis and Doug Kenney came out: Animal House. I loved the movie and it was a huge hit. That year Chris Miller wrote and published the novelization of the screenplay in his loose and witty nattative style, honed over those many years of Lampoon writing. I lost the initial copy years ago but thanks to Amazon, now own two copies, one an original printing.
I hope a lot of people read this very hip and funny memoir. I think it's a gas.
I hope a lot of people read this very hip and funny memoir. I think it's a gas.
January 24, 2014
I was surprised by the eloquent writing intermixed with the scenes of "booting," genitalia exposure, and general drunken shenanigans. There is so much more going on this novel, it was about the music of the time, but also about order and chaos. Or a pocket of chaos on this college campus, while the world around them tried to hold onto a sense of order and control. This book also showed me that people actually enjoyed having recreational sex during the olden days. Like I said, very eloquent and sophisticated writing, which I thought fit well with the all the craziness.
March 10, 2011
OK, it made me laugh in a couple of spots. Still, nothing to write home about, not nearly as deranged as they would have you think. A lot of vomiting and drinking, creative sophomoric craziness. Frankly depicted sex, but not earth-shattering- I've seen more graphic descriptions in romances.
May 12, 2016
Tremendously funny book. The first couple of chapters are a little slow, but things pick up rapidly once rush week starts. There are a few incidents described here that are really quite disgusting, but the coming-of-age storyline more than redeems it.
June 9, 2014
Just a bunch of fraternity stories. No plot
June 24, 2015
Hilarious about 70% of the time, much, much different than the movie, and containing a surprising amount of popular music commentary.
May 18, 2017
Watch the movie and skip this horrendous book.
October 6, 2021
Decidedly unfunny.
December 13, 2025
It's odd for me to finish reading a book that I didn't enjoy. I discovered a while back that there are just so many good books out there, that wasting my time on something that isn't entertaining is really silly. I actually have probably 10 books in my queue, so why not just walk away from this one?
The answer is that Animal House was a really fun movie and as always, there are things that movies omit. You've only got so much running time to make your pont. Some things might not pass muster. So you know, people are always looking for crumbs of things. And there are people who I'm sure are very completionist about these things that they want to go visit the the actual movie location or shake hands with somebody who played a particular character. I get all of that stuff. What I found in this book was that most of the things they talked about were really just kind of gross. Or repetitive. And because they're just these little episodes, I didn't really get a feel for who the characters were, and therefore I didn't really care very much about them.
So for what it's worth, I usually ask myself a few questions. Would I ever read this book again? And the answer is no. I'm kind of sorry I read it the first time. Would I recommend it to a friend? Only if the friend was a complete Animal House nut. Would I be sorry that I paid $15 for the paperback of this? Yes, absolutely. I would start a fire with it in the fireplace.
But I guess I have to be fair all around because I think that, well, they they took some of the best things and put them in the movie and therefore they didn't show up and. And some of that element of surprise was therefore lost. And this was the early 1960s, and the sexual revolution hadn't happened. It was a very different time, and it was a time before my time. So what might read as interesting for that time hasn't aged very well for the people that didn't live through it. I don't know.
I gave this A 2 star rating because I can't give it a 1 1/2 star rating. I don't think it's quite as bad as one star. There were a few moments when I did laugh, but very few. So I will leave it at rounding it up to 2 and caution the reader that this probably isn't a good book for you to read. If you’ve ever seen a sequel that tarnished the original’s luster and thought they were just cashing in...
The answer is that Animal House was a really fun movie and as always, there are things that movies omit. You've only got so much running time to make your pont. Some things might not pass muster. So you know, people are always looking for crumbs of things. And there are people who I'm sure are very completionist about these things that they want to go visit the the actual movie location or shake hands with somebody who played a particular character. I get all of that stuff. What I found in this book was that most of the things they talked about were really just kind of gross. Or repetitive. And because they're just these little episodes, I didn't really get a feel for who the characters were, and therefore I didn't really care very much about them.
So for what it's worth, I usually ask myself a few questions. Would I ever read this book again? And the answer is no. I'm kind of sorry I read it the first time. Would I recommend it to a friend? Only if the friend was a complete Animal House nut. Would I be sorry that I paid $15 for the paperback of this? Yes, absolutely. I would start a fire with it in the fireplace.
But I guess I have to be fair all around because I think that, well, they they took some of the best things and put them in the movie and therefore they didn't show up and. And some of that element of surprise was therefore lost. And this was the early 1960s, and the sexual revolution hadn't happened. It was a very different time, and it was a time before my time. So what might read as interesting for that time hasn't aged very well for the people that didn't live through it. I don't know.
I gave this A 2 star rating because I can't give it a 1 1/2 star rating. I don't think it's quite as bad as one star. There were a few moments when I did laugh, but very few. So I will leave it at rounding it up to 2 and caution the reader that this probably isn't a good book for you to read. If you’ve ever seen a sequel that tarnished the original’s luster and thought they were just cashing in...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 21, 2020
Chris Miller was one of three people to write the script for the film Animal House. He based his writing on things that happened during his fraternity days at Dartmouth College (1959-1963). In The Real Animal House, Miller recounts some of the stories and the people behind his script.
My local library offered The Real Animal House as an audiobook. Though I’m partial to reading, I still enjoyed listening to all eleven hours. In Miller’s tale, his fraternity really was completely out of control. Some of the stories are barely believable and one wonders how any of them managed to graduate.
Perhaps my favorite part was the “Whatever Happened to...?” Section at the very end. Many of Miller’s brothers did well, but there were also several tragedies. Some people had disappeared into the ether.
For a light take on college life, you’ll find it hard to beat The Real Animal House.
My local library offered The Real Animal House as an audiobook. Though I’m partial to reading, I still enjoyed listening to all eleven hours. In Miller’s tale, his fraternity really was completely out of control. Some of the stories are barely believable and one wonders how any of them managed to graduate.
Perhaps my favorite part was the “Whatever Happened to...?” Section at the very end. Many of Miller’s brothers did well, but there were also several tragedies. Some people had disappeared into the ether.
For a light take on college life, you’ll find it hard to beat The Real Animal House.
September 16, 2025
I enjoyed the movie Animal House but if you thought it was kind of gross and childish, you haven’t seen anything yet until you read the true stories that it was based on many of which the movie studio thought were too much to include in the film.
The word “sophomoric “ was definitely coined to refer to the stories in this book. College students of the early sixties getting so stupendously drunk it is a wonder they are not dead and doing lots of really gross things. Fraternity life at its most extreme!
The word “sophomoric “ was definitely coined to refer to the stories in this book. College students of the early sixties getting so stupendously drunk it is a wonder they are not dead and doing lots of really gross things. Fraternity life at its most extreme!
January 31, 2018
Can you "boot" on command? Does the thrill of binge drinking, road trips to whore houses, and overall angst excite you? Join a fraternity. Despite Chris Miller's tales of debauchery taking place in the mid 60s, the same fraternity mindset haunted them as it does the college children of now. Key point to mention, Chris Miller went on to write for National Lampoon, and his fraternity and it's tales, were the inspiration for Animal House.
September 3, 2019
As a Dartmouth alumna who enjoyed frat culture at the College, I loved this book! It was very nostalgic for me, even if the stories took place decades before I even attended the institution.
I think this book would be funny if you haven't been a Dartmouth student. But if you are against frat culture or don't understand it, then this probably isn't the book for you.
I think this book would be funny if you haven't been a Dartmouth student. But if you are against frat culture or don't understand it, then this probably isn't the book for you.
February 17, 2022
I love the movie Animal House, but I absolutely hated this book. The never ending emphasis on “booting”, bodily functions and horrific treatment of women results in a book only Brett Kavanaugh could love.
June 10, 2023
repetitive
I guess if you’re going to sell a book, entitled, “the real…“ then you have to make “the real” even more outrageous than the movie… So Chris trots out every fraternity “myth“ I’ve ever heard… and then makes it so outrageous. It’s unbelievable… And repetitive
I guess if you’re going to sell a book, entitled, “the real…“ then you have to make “the real” even more outrageous than the movie… So Chris trots out every fraternity “myth“ I’ve ever heard… and then makes it so outrageous. It’s unbelievable… And repetitive
November 29, 2024
I picked up this book on a whim and enjoyed it at the beginning. The vulgar and crass stories became boring after a few chapters. Times have changed. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the book more if I was in my 20's and it was 1960 again.
August 24, 2017
The movie is better. This is basically a story of how 1 man goes through college trying to get laid.
December 1, 2017
Very amusing audiobook
June 19, 2018
Movie was better
June 16, 2019
Finally, the story behind the story. Puts a lot of urban myths to rest about the origins of some of the scenes in the mivie.
December 31, 2019
Entertaining and you definitely see the source of the material for the movie.
November 1, 2020
So fun! Animal house was the first R movie I ever saw and it is one of my absolute favorites. So interesting to hear the stories behind the story.
May 22, 2022
Funny and shocking, raunchy and disgusting! It's a lot like spam you're not suppose to like it but you do.
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