learn to read
2004-12-22

I haven't read I Am Charlotte Simmons yet. The reason being that my mother liked it a lot (as a depiction of the debauched college culture of our time). Not a very good reason, but it's my reason nonetheless.

I have read one passage out of the book, though: the part that won the Bad Sex award.

Tom Wolfe struck back by saying that the sex writing is intentionally false and bad. I tend to believe him, as the founder of a Bad Erotica Club I have had much experience with really frighteningly bad pornographic writing. And you can always tell when somebody is doing it on purpose.

The sad part is not only that the Literary Review judges didn't get the purposely crap nature of the writing, but that they called it "ghastly and boring," as if Bad Erotica, intentional or not, deserved that kind of cookie-cutter Simon Cowell cutdown.

It's also sad that Wolfe is now in the company of squat TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh. Ladies, he's fugly!