So stop reading if you don't like it. It's a nice story, well told.

I haven't heard "twee" used for a while. Perfect usage. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was annoying me but twee and shallow as a wading pool filled with lukewarm cream soda come to mind.

Sorry, reached my limit after page 1. Someone let me know how this yummy bit of earth-shattering fascinatia ends, ok?

(Although I'd be much more interested in the answer to how this kind of thing makes it to Salon.)

Personally, I hope her book is about an overpriveleged Pretty Young Hipster who makes it big because of her Ivy League connections. My god, it's time someone wrote that story.

I don't think I've read anything like this navel-gazing sexual stuff since 1999 on Salon. I could be wrong. I'm not a regular reader.

Anyway, most of it was a good read, but I have to nitpick:

"The second I was old enough to know what sex was, I knew I wanted to have a one-night stand...Largely because I had no idea what it entailed."

This is within the first paragraph. What's wrong here? Hmm... she was old enough to know what sex was. Okay... she wanted to have a one-night stand. Okay still with you... and yet she had no idea what it entailed.

Wait a minute! So she did NOT actually know what sex was, contrary to what she said in the opening sentence?

That pretty much knocked this piece from B to a C in my book.

Also, did she never consider just going to a nightclub, like any normal 20-something? Gimme a break, lady. Just because you make things hard on yourself doesn't make your life any more interesting.

The point of this twee twaddle is Sloane Crosley is a pretty young thing who works as a publicist for a major publisher and knows how to work connections, but, surprise, when she's not flacking or reviewing she's got very little to say. If this collection of wispy non-events is any evidence, her book must be a nearly obscene example of a comfortable privileged life inflated to book length.

She takes SEVEN paragraphs to describe a failed eight word pickup line in a library.

I'm sure executive types find her ability to spin wittily about

banal experiences refreshing, but if I'm going to read self-obsessed anecdotes, I want a hot mess like Elizabeth Wurtzel. This makes Prozac Nation seem like freaking Balzac. Sloane is the anti-Wurtzel - trying to seem dynamic in her complete lack of shading. It's excruciating.

And that's probably why she's got a book - on Riverhead, no less, which really seems enamored of the bankable white girls. Of course she's smarter than Margaret Seltzer and writes about stuff which is beyond verification. What evidence can there be of not hooking up with a guy in a library?

Except there's her claim to have a spatial learning disability. Gawker has expressed doubt about this though it's all speculation: http://gawker.com/news/diagnoses/whats-really-wrong-with-sloane-crosley-327295.php

Funny how she doesn't mention it in this essay.

Reading tripe like this from other people roughly my age makes me groan and think maybe my generation is hopeless after all. It also makes me wonder if I could write some third rate drivel about my sexual exploits and my jaunt through Europe (oh wait, every middle class kid in America has had a significant European experience these days) and get it published. Normally I enjoy almost everything in Salon, even the fluffy pieces or the ones that don't seem to have much of a point, but this one has just pushed me over the edge. Maybe she should try reading some Fitzgerald so she can figure out what a real short story is like.

fuck already. i only scanned the damn article and it still made me want to slap myself for reading it.

i had no idea it was possible to be out of high school and still be so angst ridden that a simple fuck was so complicated.

i feel sorry for the guy she does end up with because he's going end up an asshole in a bad chick-lit novel.

good grief.

why is everyone so angry at the writer?

it is well-written. say what you want about the topic but don't assume you know her whole life story from a short essay.

i have a feeling most of you are writers because what else could provoke such bitterness?

if you can do better, do it ... don't be a hater

Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought I would be writing to you. I'm just an average guy at a small New England University, and my sex life had almost come to a complete halt, only four or five times a week, if you can believe it. Pretty dull and mundane. But one night I was in the library, cramming for a big test; I was bored to death, thinking how a one-night-stand would be just what the doctor ordered right about then when out of the blue this hot little honey comes walking up, clutching her books with cute little nervous hands. She looked sweet and lost; she was kind of adorable that way, different than the tigress types I usually hooked up with.

"Would you like to get out of here?" she said, obviously gathering every ounce of her courage. Her long straight hair hung lightly on her shoulders, and I could imagine it flipping and whipping around while we were doing the deed, hot! But I decided to play with her a little, just to put her at her ease.

"Why?" I asked, flirting back with her. But it was the wrong thing to say, I guess, because she just blushed and turned and walked away. I collected my books and was about to go after her when a tall blonde girl and a bosomy redhead blocked my way. "What's your hurry, big boy?" said the blonde. The redhead smiled. "My name is Heather, and this is Chanelle, and we were wondering if you'd go like to 'study.'"

"Yes," Chanelle said, "This subject is just really hard, don't you think? Is it HARD for you?"

Well, we went back to their dorm room and studied our brains out, after which they promised to introduce me to five of their friends. But that, as they say, is another story!