Word: vernon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...These days they focus too on how not to offend local sensibilities, no longer searching veiled women, for example. ("But if I find an Afghan woman who is 6 ft. 5 in."--Osama bin Laden's height--"I'm sure as hell going to have her searched," says Sergeant Vernon Story.) Soldiers are also learning to be more wary regarding tips about al-Qaeda suspects; the U.S. has often been duped into taking sides in tribal feuds...
...have to dig too deep to find the link between writing novels and conning people out of lots of money: both involve making stuff up. So it wasn't completely shocking when D.B.C. Pierre, the author of Vernon God Little (Canongate; 277 pages), which won the prestigious Man Booker Prize two weeks ago, rather dramatically announced that he wasn't D.B.C. Pierre at all. Turns out he's really Peter Finlay, 42, an Australian who earlier in life ran up enormous debts and bilked a close friend out of an apartment to feed his runaway drug and gambling habits (from...
...British press is playing his win as a redemption story. But does the book really make up for the long rap sheet? Vernon God Little is a black comedy about a luckless teenage loser living in Martirio, billed as the Barbecue Sauce Capital of Texas. Little's friend Jesus Navarro has just committed a horrendous Columbine-style massacre at their high school, and Little, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets charged as an accessory. Little's desperate attempts to exonerate himself only wind up exposing the venal hypocrisies of the people around...
...America exposed? A brand new confederacy of dunces unearthed? Americans make temptingly large targets for satire these days--what with the chronic obesity and all--but I'll be double-dog-darned if we're quite this easy to skewer. Pierre may have come clean about his past, but Vernon God Little feels like just another con. --By Lev Grossman
...Yankees] got it. It’s in the bag. It’s gonna be a great game,” Marc A. Parris ’06 of Mt. Vernon, N.Y. defiantly boasted before the game began...