In this essay, Greg Wilson, a pop-culture writer who lives in central Texas, argues that the narrative voice of Vernon in Pierre's Vernon God Little is anything but authentic.

In his novel Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre has received a great deal of praise for the authenticity of his eponymous narrator's highly stylized teenage voice. The narrator is a fifteen-year-old Texas boy, an outcast full of typical adolescent rebellion and anger; the prose is filled with unconventional phrasing and language. Indeed, an author no less reputable than Joyce Carol Oates has commented on the author's "flawless ear for adolescent-boy speech." When it comes to narrative voice, Vernon God Little has been favorably compared to classics such as Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. This praise must come from readers who have, at best, a superficial understanding of...