by Michael Wolff
One of the most difficult things for a writer is to find a "voice" that works for him because it can solve all kinds of other problems and often make the most mundane material compelling. Wolff is a young journalist who has used several of his articles—on the Patty Hearst kidnapping, on '60s kids revisited in San Francisco, on students' spring break in Florida, among others—as a basis for a "nonfiction novel." The prose is curiously flat, and there are pages of dialogue punctuated with two-word sentences. Yet it succeeds, and Wolff's scenes and people come vividly to life, with a resonance that echoes in the mind. "It's fine," as one of Wolff's characters might say. "Even delicious." (Summit Books, $10.95)
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