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...Charlotte Simmons, a 676-page cinder block of a work, attempts to accurately portray, in typical Wolfian anthropological style, life at an elite university. Its failure as a work of journalistic fiction does not stem solely from its carefully sketched out but nonetheless hopelessly clichéd characters, but also from its moral judgment of these characters as if they are objective examples of contemporary youth...
Wolfe’s portrait of the libidinal college youth of today wouldn’t be so important if it was not Wolfe writing—with all the gravitas and supposed cultural clarity he brings to the page. Famous for the New Journalism style he virtually pioneered in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and perfected in The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe is the best-known novelist of the intricacies of the American cultural scene...
...danger lies in the delicacy of Wolfe’s role as decoder of American life. That’s because in Charlotte Simmons he doesn’t merely depict undergraduate life—he damns it. And he damns it with the paltry evidence he marshals in page after innumerable page of colorful but ultimately stereotypical “evidence...
...four-letter words. Wolfe does get it right here, at least initially; college students swear an awful lot, and create new and intricate forms of words that used to only have a few. But he gets too giddy when he includes the telltale word seventeen times in a half-page of dialogue. And his imitation rap by the fictionally famous “Doctor Dis” that churns beneath every sweaty dance party is hilarious, though it’s not supposed to be: “spears her haunches Dirty Sanchez dude what wants her nude and slutty...
...into the harsh light of day, probably for the first time in several years? Why, they made the Harvard fans hold up signs that said “WE SUCK” for at least the hundred thousandth of second needed to take the picture that graces the front page of the wittily titled www.harvardsucks.org. 20 Elis wearing “Harvard Pep Squad” t-shirts and claiming that they lived in “HoPfo” passed out 1800 pieces of paper to the home crowd, assuring the Harvard fans that they would spell...