Reviewed because 'The Preppy Handbook' wasn't available. But that one will come, trust me.I didn't get this book at the Whitehorse Library because, face it, they just don't have it. Not a classic like good ol' icecream-suited Tom Wolfe, the social critiquer of New York. (Scourage?)
This is a very interesting book. It screams of race relations, tensions, ghettos, pride, wealth and crime. Wolfe is known for his extreme repetitions to hammer home a point, and also uses body parts to extrapolate meaning. In I Am Charlotte Simmons it was 'pelvic saddles' and not to great effect, either.
The story is a good one, almost a 'rich boy, poor boy' but in this case, 'WASP boy, Jewish boy' scenario. The rich boy's mistress hits a young black man with her car, he is dying. His friend, a witness, fingers the rich man as the driver. Chaos ensues.
During this, the class struggles of the wealthy vs. the other wealthy are shown in strenuous detail, and also made me want to pump out phrases like, 'lustrous' 'lion pride' 'Yale chin' 'Southampton summer'
The district attorney interested in the hit-and-run has a political reason; issues of black vs. white are hot in the media. The DA is also poor, relatively. There is also a hugely amusing drunk journalist, who gets the media into the story as he falls from grace due to lacklustre stories and blinding hangovers. Once scene shows him listing to the left, unsteady from a hangover while the cops involved in the hit and run laugh at him. It's telling.
Good book, it's definitely a classic and gives us a little peek into the lives of the disgustingly rich. We could all use that, as a social leavener to show us how little we actually have...or feel lucky we aren't them, tangled in a web of pearls and dinners.
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