Matt’s Reviews > 4 3 2 1 > Status Update

First of all, there would be the matter of letting Nobodaddy peer into his anus and examine his testicles, of coughing the obligatory cough and taking a written test that would prove whether he was intelligent enough to die for his country.

Grow up, Archie. Try acting like a man.

I am trying.

Not hard enough.

I’ll try harder, I promise. The important thing is that I’ll never stop loving you.

You already have. You’re so sick of us, you don’t even want to look at me anymore.

That’s not true.

Stop lying, please. And while you’re at it, Archie, from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourself, too.

Think of Einstein, Jim said. Think of Richard Feynman. They don’t kill Jews at Princeton, Archie, they just make them walk around with yellow stars in their sleeves.

Forget about studying French. My first impulse was the right one all along, History and political science. To which Ferguson raised an imaginary glass and said: Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask Amy Schneiderman to run your country.

[…] her laugh wasn’t the squealing, out-of-control noise of a child, he noted, but a succession of gut-deep, resonant guffaws—merry yaps, to be sure, but at the same time thoughtful, as if she understood why she was laughing, which made her laugh an intelligent laugh, a laugh that laughed at itself even as it laughed at what it was laughing at.

He had no clear knowledge of how babies were produced, but he had learned enough to know they started inside the bodies of their mothers, and therefore mothers were essential to the operation, which meant the he would have to talk to his own mother about changing his status from only child to brother.