Clovers In The Atmosphere

that's right. I'm back. Now you can all stop staring at the apostrophe I misused in the previous post. Is the correct use of the apostrophe (and maybe quotation marks) the gang sign of the overeducated or what? Anyway, I saw it and decided to leave it up there as a feeble middle finger to SNOOTitude.

amazing things seen since returning to Manitoba:

an angry looking 30 year old who had spray-painted over the "friendly" on her license plate that normally reads "friendly Manitoba." adolescence run wild.

a promotion on campus led by the industrial food provider called "Rollin' with Aramark." just keep working that one around in your mind and see on how many levels this is absurd.

a $300 class to hone your soap carving skills. This is not a joke. The DAT (dental aptitude test) in Canada has a "soap carving" section where they give you a bar of soap and ask you to make a specific shape and size. I guess you don't want clumsy dentists, but that is pretty bizarre.

a girl stopping a lecture with 800 (that's right) people in it, and mind you, this was not a Socratic-style lecture with a lot of audience participation, to ask a question that simply proved she had no idea what was going on. now 800 people think you are rude, but also know you are an idiot.

time for clovers' bookclub:

I am Charlotte Simmons is a truly hateful book. Unlike "A man in full," Wolfe creates no sympathetic characters. Now the idea of a dystopic youth culture isn't new, but Wolfe's vision of elite college stocked with stereotypes (the dumb jock; the ambitious jewish nerd; the promiscuous wannabe banker frat boy; the sarcastic elitist boarding school roommate; the ignorant, powerful athletic coach, the liberal jewish professor who misses the '60s) that simply make the author appear to be a doddering fogey rather then capturing any sort of zeitgeist of nihilism. Now these classes of people do exist in modern colleges, but where Wolfe's novel fails is in exploding their subtlety. Nobody plays against type. He takes the behavior (particulalry that of the boorish males) at face value without allowing them motivation or internality, and this makes the novel flat. Charlotte, the protagonist, is not so much a stereotype as a figment of Wolfe's imagination. She is academically brilliant, from very rural north carolina, possessed with beauty an a budding sexuality which are hugely understated due to her heavily religious upbringing. I know somebody misses the '50s ideal of womanhood, but trying to cram her into a modern character and make it believeable is absurd.

Reading "a man in full" and I am charlotte simmons" back to back reveals the formulaic weaknesses in wolfe's writing. Both contain an extended passage of the generalized behaviour of those suffering mild depression in relation to the protagonists' responses to bad situations. Both contain flourishs of Greek philosophy which are used as clear and beautiful beacons in the murky immorality of modernity. Wolfe is overly fond of the construction "Bango!--..." to express a quick occurence. MOst unfortunate are the passing allusions to rappers in the novels. "man" includes the work of a fictious rapper "Dr. Rammer Doc Doc," while the collegians in "Simmons" are endlessly listening to "Dr. Dis." The music of both is characterized as liscivious and degrading. One must assume that these are awkward references to Dr. Dre; however, the there repetition reveals Wolfe to be out of touch stammering like James Traficant or Ted Stevens about "Beaver and Buffcoat" and "the tubes of the internets."

The only redeeming quality of "Simmons" is the ability to play the game "who am I and or my friends and aquaintances in this college landscape?"

There is a strong tradition of American men writing slightly sexists novels in the last 50 years (Roth, Bellow, etc.), but there is a lack of subtlety, a lack of believability, and most crucially a lack of empathy in Wolfe's writing that makes the common sins of these authors seem more glaring in Wolfe. That being said, his novels do turn pages. They are easy reads that bob their heads just above the abyss of pure trash to allow readers to read them. There is a place in this world for good old fashioned yarns that don't teach us too much about ourselves or others but sure do pass the time. I place Wolfe happily in this catagory. I hope he does not aspire to escape it.

Zadie Smith's "On Beauty" is another modern novel about a university setting (a thinly veiled Harvard). Smith also creates few likeable characters within the university setting. SHe paints most of the professors as irrelevant, power hungry and/or petty and most of students are posturing and pampered; however, she does show some respect for and understanding of hip-hop. She loves Levi (the youngest son of the protangonist family) and is deeply sympathetic to his conflicted relationship to rap music as a middle class child with one african-american parent. This exploration of Levi's urban culture is the high point of the novel. Smith is guilty of a number of sins including incomplete mastery of the Americanness and a willingness to engage her own long-shot cliche in the form of Charles the brilliant street poet. This novel probably attempts to take on the internal worlds of too many people (upwards of 10) which was also a problem in White Teeth, but her writing style is much closer to the great novel as insight into others which isn't even visible in the distance of "I am Charlotte Simmons."