[lbo-talk] From another thread

Matthias Wasser matthias.wasser at gmail.com
Thu Nov 26 06:20:02 PST 2009


On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 9:01 AM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:


>
> awhile back we had a brief convo about the uses of fiction to make points
> about social life. i was complaining about the way I Am Charlotte Simmons
> was made to stand in for everything that goes on in universities today. It
> was, basically, the only evidence used to illustrate the idea of class
> reduced to culture. That's what I don't get: how can anyone justify using
> one book -- a work of fiction -- to illustrate the entire university system
> in the u.s. Is this normal in litcrit?
>
> shag

Well, any contemporary college student will recognize IACS as totally orthogonal to their experiences, so there's that problem. It's a hilarious read, though, both for that and because Wolfe is a genuinely good prose stylist. You get both laughing-at and laughing-with, which is a rare combination.



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