Hounding Wolfe

The bad reviews for I Am Charlotte Simmons continue to accumulate. Bob Minzesheimer of USA Today says Wolfe's treatment of campus life is a "relic" that picks targets "as easy as they come." In Newsday, Henry Alford (yes, the famous "investigative humorist" Henry Alford) laments that "our pre-eminent social realist" has produced a "cliched and at times agonizing to read" novel, though he has nice things to say about the "trademark sparkling prose," which "finds its perfect target in academia's beer-soaked bacchanals." Personally, while Wolfe puts his prose through all sorts of paces, I don't believe it does anything quite as unmasculine as sparkle, even in "an elegantly wrought Animal House." And I think by now we have some stronger candidates for "pre-eminent social realist," in terms of literary quality if not notoriety... Meanwhile, over at the San Francisco Chronicle, David Kipen describes Wolfe's "signature pyrotechnic prose" as "threadbare" and "antique," then goes on to say "the book defies credibility, taste and the remotest semblance of subtlety." Which sounds about right--I've always considered our pre-eminent social realist's fiction roughly on a par with the "social realism" of late Bret Easton Ellis, only with less gore. Actually, for that matter, I think American Psycho and Glamorama are probably better, and that's taking into account my dismissal of Glamorama as Ellis imitating Mark Leyner imitating Ellis. Come to think of it, I miss Mark Leyner, even now that I've got George Saunders in my life.