Fatal Flaw by William Lashner

I don't post a lot of fiction reviews because most of the fiction I read is intentionally "mindless." Sometimes I stumble on an exception. Lashner's use of language and his insights are exceptional.

The book is essentially about irrational men irrationally in love with a woman who suckers them all.

Lust will make a fool of any man, but it is only love that can truly ruin him.

Nostalgia is a fire fueled by failures of memory.

There are several threads in the book and most of the characters alternate between despicable and sympathetic.

Nothing existed to temper his desire. Whatever he wanted was right, whoever opposed him was wrong, everything he did was justified and proper, everything in this universe existed for the purpose of serving him. You could see it in the way he dealt with people, the way he dealt with problems, the way, finally, he dealt the cards. It was subtle, but not too subtle for someone trained to see the flip of the finger and the distinct sound of cards slipped from the bottom of the deck at crucial points in the game.

He manages to state the obvious and make it funny:

"All very technical, Officer Cantwell" "Most of our work is. That's why we're called technicians."

I'll read the rest of Lashner's catalog.

I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

"Caricature in words" is what Tom Wolfe renders to the reader. The characters are always bigger than real life yet believable. They are always exaggerated yet they are real. They always tell us something about life.

Anyone who has been to college as an adolescent and paid any attention to the social surroundings recognizes at least some of the people in these pages. You'll also remember the rituals... and at least some of the lessons learned.

Some excerpts. On college sports:

"...What is it with this sports mania in the first place? Why does anybody get excited because Dupont is gonna play Indiana in basketball? Either our hired mercenaries will beat their hired mercenaries, or vice versa. Why does anybody care? It's a game between two groups of guys who have no connection with our lives whatsoever, and even if they did, it's only a game! Why does a game get students so emotionally involved? Or anybody else for that matter. What does it mean to them? I don't see how it could mean anything, but obviously it does. It's a mystery. It's completely irrational."

On the Coach and the College President:

But [the President] could only do so gingerly, with his own job in his hands - because there was one thing he couldn't do. He couldn't fire [the Coach]. Only the board of trustees could do that-and they could also fire the President.

On coeds:

The groupies pranced forward, pretty white girls whose faces, had they chosen to leave them unpainted, could have been those of the sweetest, most dedicated day-care-center volunteers. As it was, their eyes shone from way down in Night Life black occipital craters. Their eyelids bore cantilevered store-bought lashes, their lips gleamed with an astonishing range of hues, the waists of their jeans were below the tops of their hip joints, and the jeans were so tight, their belly buttons so conspicuously pierced with silver rings from which hung a short string or two of pearls. . . that they looked like hookers.

On language:

...Shit Patois. Charlotte had been aware of Fuck Patois from the day she arrived at Dupont, but it was not until spending hour after hour after hour cooped up in this SUV that she realized how cool it apparently was to use shit in every way possible: to mean possessions ("Where's your shit?"), lies or misleading explanations ("Are you shitting me?" "We need a shit detector"), drunk ("shit-faced"), trouble ("in deep shit"), ineptitude ("couldn't play point guard for shit"), care about ("give a shit"), rude, thoughtless, disloyal ("really shitty thing to do"), not kidding ("no shit?"), obnoxiously unpleasant ("he's a real shit"), mindless conversation ("talking shit," "shooting the shit"), confusing story ("or some such shit"), drugs ("you bring the shit?"), to egest ("take a shit"), to fart in such a way that it becomes partly egestion ("shart"), a trivial matter ("a piece a shit"), unpleasantly surprised ("he about shit a brick"), ignorance ("he don't know shit"), pompous man ("the big shit," "that shitcake"), hopeless situation ("up Shit Creek"), disappointment ("oh, shit!"), startling ("holy shit!"), unacceptable, inedible ("shit on a shingle"), strategy ("oh, that shit again"), feces, literally ("shit"), slum ("some shithook neighborhood"), meaningless ("that don't mean shit"), et cetera ("and massages and shit"), self-important ("he thinks he's some shit"), predictably ("sure as shit"), very ("mean as shit"), verbal abuse ("gave me shit"), violence ("before the shit came down" or "hit the fan," "don't start no shit," "won't be no shit"). Still, they didn't neglect Fuck Patois...

This is a great book. Classic Tom Wolfe. A good read.