a person once said to me that if someone described the act of playing a piano to them, and they had never seen anyone do it, they would have said such a thing was not humanly possible. i agreed with them and it also voices how i feel about the writing of tom wolfe, and others like him. i just don't understand how he is able to write from the intimate perspective of so many people, so many races, so many generations, backgrounds, agendas, perspectives. and to do so so entirely believably. it's wholly unreasonable to my mind because i've always been taught and told to write about what you know, from your experience and there's just no way this man has this experience or this insight. it's ten kinds of crazy which makes his efforts twenty kinds of enjoyable. this sprawling narrative is surely no exception.

one curiosity about this book is some of the oft-repeated phrases used throughout. there are two in particular that stand out for me even now. one was "big-breasted lawns" which there seem to be many of in the more affluent parts of atlanta. and the other phrase was "shank to flank" which i must confess to being not entirely sure what it means, but it does have a way of rolling off the tongue in a mischievous and decadent way.