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"Bango"?

This book reads pretty much like what it is: a clever 70-something trying to capture the language and culture of today's college students. The story is OK, but you couldn't exactly call Wolfe the authentically insouciant and ironic voice of a generation.

One gets the impression the old dandy got his insights about fashion and vernacular from hanging around inside an Abercrombie & Fitch store for half an hour. Over and over again we learn, as if these were some penetrating insights into campus zeitgeist, that undergraduate girls dress like sluts and undergraduate boys favor uncreased khakis and don't part their hair. Once he's told us these things by the third or fourth time, we realize that that's about the depth at which he's managed to penetrate this scene.

Note to Wolfe: today's college kids do not punctuate their thoughts with words like "Bango!"