Word: vernon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wanted to ask a wide cross-section of black America, ‘What would be the problem of the 21st century?’” Gates says. “All people talked about was, as Vernon Jordan put it, ‘the money,’ it was all about the money, it was about economic relationships. So that was very curious to me, very fascinating...
FEATURING: Interviews with Colin Powell, Vernon Jordan, Franklin D. Raines, Russell Simmons, Quincy Jones, Maya Angelou, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Alicia Keys, Nia Long, Don Cheadle, John Singleton, Chris Tucker, Bernie Mac, Jesse Jackson
...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