The new star-boy

He is exactly what you might expect from an eighteen-year-old first-time novelist, full of look-what-I've-done bravado and, a moment later, achievement-minimalizing shrugs and profanity. He is not angsty or ferocious; he is Angsty and Ferocious. A large portion of his sudden notoriety seems due to the introduction of his book, In Which a Real-Life Teenager Writes About Other Teenagers Foisting Violence Upon His Generation, and to the connections his family has with a publishing industry that obviously sees him as a commodity, and not a writer. Which is pretty much what he is.