59 bar steady 29.90 0mpn WSW dewpoint 44 Beltane
Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon
A mediocre night at sheepshead, but we had a lot of laughs anyhow. Bill Schmidt cleaned up the nickels tonight.
While driving back and forth I finished I Am Charlotte Simons, a 2004 Tom Wolfe novel. It’s reviews are all over the map and I can see why. On the one hand it is an arresting look at college life in the Ivy league. On the other hand the characters never reached very deep into my soul. It was long and brimming with detail, a novel of manners of a sort. I’m glad I “read” it. (Listened to it.) Don’t know if I would have finished it as a read.
Another writer who has my complete attention right now is Richard Price, author of Clockers and Lush Life. I finished Clockers a few weeks ago and bought Lush Life last week. I’m part way into it. This guy writes dialogue with an ear like no body I’ve read before. In Clockers he channels inner city drug dealers and homicide detectives with equal credulity. Lush Life continues this same kind of street savvy attention to speech and mores, this time on the Lower East Side in New York. Clockers was set in New Jersey.
Both of these guys, in different ways, reach into a segment of American life only a few of us witness. Of the two, Price’s work has the ring of authenticity while Wolfe’s is satirical and just a bit off key. Still, I enjoy both authors and am glad to have them on the scene.
I returned, last night and today, to a novel I’ve fooled around with since 2001, Superior Wolf. It has possibilities.
