Letters to the Editor
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Where Crosley might have started
The dichotomy of the college roommates was nicely drawn. The one wanting the sweat and mess of getting laid, the other trying to find her sensuality while squeaky clean in the shower. As fictional characters, perhaps, it would have been interesting to see where these embodiments of two competing American impulses would have ended.
I know squeaky clean save-it-until-marriage types with secret orgies beneath their (chastity) belts. Though this fictional roommate is probably a dyke, at least of the temporary college variety.
I know LOTS of girls with scores of notches on their thongs who are now fiercely monogamous mothers.
I think this author should have seen this memoir as a first draft for a novel.
I just re-read On The Road, which I think is the grandfather of all this type of memoir/fiction, and thought, so what? I realized that I was reading Kerouac as though his memoir/novel was published today, and thought how unremarkable it was. On the other hand, the more polished, ficitonalized Dharma Bums reads better now, though many consider it his dumbed down work.
Given the cacaphony of the blogosphere confessions, what seems missing is the interior spaces that writing should take us into. There is a hint of that here in Crosley's observations, but it's just a start of a start.