LOUDERMILK Or, The Real Poet; Or, The Origin of the World

Narrator Joel Froomkin's devil-may-care tone perfectly matches the attitude of tall, fair-haired, charismatic Troy Augustus Loudermilk, a young man who wins a prestigious poetry scholarship even though he has never written a poem. In this comic novel, Ives pulls back the curtain on higher education, revealing the scam that people can be taught to write and the calcified bureaucracy that allows banality to be praised while real talent is hidden. Luckily, Loudermilk's best friend, Harry Rego, can write, and that's what he does while Loudermilk trolls for coeds. Froomkin lets Ives's observational humor shine through his pacing, keeping the listener chuckling and sometimes laughing out loud. The audiobook's comedy comes from the 2000s "dude" culture embodied in Froomkin's daffy performance, which bounces from one weird scene to the next. R.O. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2019]