NP - Jesus' Son

[David Morris]

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/vietnam

When a novel's first words are "Last night at 3:00 a.m. President
Kennedy had been killed," and the rest of it evinces no more feel for
the English language and often a good deal less, and America's most
revered living writer touts "prose of amazing power and stylishness"
on the back cover, and reviewers agree that whatever may be wrong with
the book, there's no faulting its finely crafted sentences—when I see
all this, I begin to smell a rat. Nothing sinister, mind you. It's
just that once we Americans have ushered a writer into the
contemporary pantheon, we will lie to ourselves to keep him there.