Kin Platt, like J. D. Salinger a generation ago, has evidently been doing a lot of listening [to young adults], because The Doomsday Gang has the most accurate reproduction of the speech of urban male teenagers since Catcher in the Rye. Not only do four-letter words appear on every page, they appear in nearly every sentence, and in their variant forms they substitute for almost any noun, verb, or adjective. The effect, as in the original, is numbing and very effectively conveys the flatness and boredom of the limited lives of street kids. In this reviewer's opinion the language of The Doomsday Gang is completely justified by the subject; this is the way these hostile, abandoned kids would talk, and anyone who prefers that they say "Goodness gracious!" instead of "What the fuck!" is opting for dishonesty. (p. 340)

The real selection problem with The Doomsday Gang stems not...