Reply #37: Haven't read any of his books, but [View All]

[WildEyedLiberal]

I did read a passage from "I Am Charlotte Simmons" that was printed in Rolling Stone, and I didn't like it at all. Quite frankly, I was having some trouble understanding the hype; and if all of his books are written like "Charlotte," then I'm completely befuddled as to his literary appeal. It's not that the structure of his sentences was terrible, as is the case in many books published nowadays, but his characterizations and descriptions were simply awful. His title character and her parents, hillbillies from North Carolina, were the most terribly stereotyped cookie cutter "mountain folk" characters I've ever encountered in a novel that purported to take itself seriously. He seems to have this quaint, patronizing view of rural people that I found quite subliminally offensive (though I'm not from the mountains), and his portrait of life in the dorms I found to be a ridiculous parody. I don't go to an "elite" school, but I find it really hard to believe that boys in dorms at Yale, Harvard, et al still actually say "whazaaaaaap!!!" I mean, come on. NO ONE has said "whazaaaaap" for AT LEAST five years. To me, the book seemed to be a rather sad attempt by a seventy year old man to capture the feel of the "hip" and "cool" preppy elite college scene. Also, it doesn't help that his characters were crudely constructed two dimensional regional and class-based stereotypes for whom it's hard to have any deep or genuine sympathy.

And it REALLLY doesn't help that he's a freeper. In fact, that's probably a good reason why his text is so terribly artificial - conservatives tend to have an atrocious grasp of modern culture or authentic life experiences, preferring instead to live in their rose-colored dream world in which men are hard working, women are pretty, kids are quiet, and everyone who isn't is a part of the liberal counterculture.