'In I Am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe gives us a tabula rasa from the Blue Ridge mountains who attends prestigious Dupont University only to find herself caught in the prevailing cultural, moral, and human maelstrom of American college life at the turn of the century. We all walked past buildings at Duke, but Wolfe seems to have seen through them.'

Read the full review, "Bonfire of the Varsities," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

Bonfire of the Vanities is one of my favorite novels in any language. A Man in Full, Wolfe's follow-up novel was a disappointment. I am Charlotte Simmons is horrible. You get the feeling that Wolfe never got laid in college and that he never got over that fact. Get over it, dude. There's plenty of time in life to make up for lost time. One of the most ridiculous points in the book is the complete devastation of the heroine because she gets porked by a frat guy after a formal dance. Once again, get over it. It's just sex. Forget the fact that Wolfe spends I-don't-know-how-many-pages describing a fraternity dance. Who the fuck cares, Tom? This was the most pointless novel I have read in years and I only stuck it out to the end out of respect for one of my literary heroes. You can do better, Mr. Wolfe. Can't you? Please tell me you can do better.

Sigh...

It's no fun writing a hatchet job, much less a hatchet job on one of your heroes. I read Charlotte Simmons about a year ago and hated it, but decided that the generousity of the Christmas Spirit might make it the perfect time for me to read it. Jesus it was even worse.

I love Tom Wolfe, his early journalism is alive as very few works I know. His critism is sharp and cutting and can make a whole school of thought look ridiculous in a clever turn of phrase. His novels are flawed sure but like his journalism the sheer verve and style of his prose carries them across whatever bumps they might have.

Until Charlotte Fucking Simmons.

The problem is that since Hooking Up Tom Wolfe has found himself fascinated by post modern philosphy. He's no longer concerned with writing about individuals but has instead decided to focus on the misfiring chemicals in their brain in a probablistic equation. He makes Kurt Vonnegut look like Saint Augustine when it comes to subject of free will and it's sucked the life write out of his books. It's heartbreaking.

Worse yet is he's lost his ear for society and character. Ms. Simmons who has been raised around meth mouths and shit kickers would not be shocked by an errant Silver Bullet Tall Boy.

The book goes from muddled to straight out surreal about midway through where Wolfe suddenly decides to play a two hundred page game of "Whose's going to bust Charlotte Simmon's Cherry." which would be bad enough if Wolfe didn't narrate the proceedings with the smirk of a dirty old uncle.

It's sad that Zadie Smith accomplished in a page long vignette in On Beauty what it took Wolfe 700 odd pages to not accomplish.

3.5 stars rounded up. Tom Wolfe is always a fun read, and I enjoyed reading this (very long) book, but I never felt a strong connection to any of the characters, including the protagonist, Charlotte. In this book, Wolfe's characters are largely self-absorbed college students at a fictional elite university. I didn't see myself, even in my college days, in any of them. I think we're supposed to have sympathy for Charlotte, who comes to this elite university as an academic prodigy from a small country town in the Blue Ridge mountains, but she turns out to be as self-absorbed as the fellow students she thinks she transcends.

I only read 50% of the book because it was for uni and omg what a pain in the ass. I hated this book SO much!!

L'ULTIMA BRAVA RAGAZZA AMERICANA
Partita con la curiosità di leggere quella che doveva essere una lucida e spietata analisi dell’ambiente universitario americano, fatta da un grande “vecchio” come Tom Wolfe (ben oltre la boa dei settanta anni), sono rimasta sinceramente perplessa, e mi chiedo se sono solo io ad aver avuto la sensazione di rivedere semplicemente uno dei tanti film che il cinema ci ha propinato negli ultimi decenni (stile American Pie, o dintorni).
Charlotte, l’autentica brava ragazza americana, di origini modeste, secchiona, e pure vergine (ma già questa idealizzazione di partenza induce a sospettare che per Wolfe le brave ragazze americane proprio non esistono), parte dal natio paesello di provincia per andare a studiare in una delle migliori università (nella finzione, la Dupont University), carica di mille ambizioni e aspettative, e scopre che, orrore!, l’ambiente universitario non è poi così idilliaco. Anzi.

Ma ci voleva questo romanzo per apprendere che, anche nelle migliori università USA, gli atleti delle squadre sportive hanno a disposizione corsi per cosiddetti semianalfabeti, che permettono loro di laurearsi tranquillamente, concentrandosi solo sull’attività agonistica; che le confraternite studentesche sono in realtà centri in cui si allacciano le cerchie di amicizia e di interesse tra i potenti delle generazioni di domani; che i dormitori universitari sono spesso teatro di festini promiscui, di scherzi sadici, e che i verdi campus sono anche luoghi di confusione, sporcizia e violenza, dove chi vuol davvero studiare fatica a trovare la concentrazione; e che chi si rintana nel silenzio delle biblioteche, e non si atteggia a gallina cheerleader, proprio come Charlotte, finisce per essere emarginata, boicottata, ferita?

In realtà, come ho premesso, io non sono riuscita a cogliere questa acuta analisi sociologica, né ho trovato gran novità nella narrazione della caduta e della iniziazione-trasformazione di Charlotte (trasformazione, peraltro, talmente enigmatica e buonista, che non saprei se definirla con certezza una vittoria della protagonista. Protagonista per cui, a dirla tutta, non ho provato grande simpatia).

Ecco, di questo libro corposo (quasi 780 pagine), mi rimarrà piuttosto il ricordo delle parolacce, un fiume continuo di volgarità, che nelle intenzioni del vecchio scrittore dovevano forse rendere l’ambiente giovanilistico, ma che alla fine hanno appesantito inutilmente la (mia) lettura. In ogni caso, anche le parolacce non mi paiono un gran elemento di novità: quasi tutti i film ambientati nei campus americani ne sono pieni.

Hmmm...I don't know how to sum this book up, because the ending left me with a very weird taste in my mouth - it seemed too abrupt (even after 700+pages)!

The story and characters kept me totally engrossed, mainly because they took me right back to my first few days at UC Davis and what it felt like to be thrown into such a bizarre mix of people and behaviors. Charlotte was a lot more sheltered than I was before heading off to college, but her feelings of loneliness and an intense need to belong (all while being skeptical of why she was looking for acceptance from total strangers) definitely resonated with me.

Wolfe's writing is detailed and in today's vernacular (or as close to today's college vernacular as a middle-aged, well-read guy can get), so this was a really quick read for me. I wasn't bored at any point, and often had trouble putting the book down.

Still, I have to say I am unhappy with the ending. No, every storyline and conflict didn't get tied up neatly (nor should they), but I still felt - especially after so many detail-filled pages - that some key characters' transitions did get skipped over.

Wow. I believe you can write about being young no matter how old you are. However, I don't know if you can write about being young and going to college in 2004, when you haven't been young (or attended college) since the Eisenhower administration.

This absurd novel, which fails as a novel in any convention sense except perhaps self-satire, follows the travails of a beautiful, smart, yet pure-as-the driven-snow hillbilly angel, who emerged out of what sounds like a hobbit hole in Western North Carolina and landed at Duke, I mean, Dupont University, where all the women are rich sorority girls, radicalized lesbian separatists or grotesque underlings who grovel and drool in the dorm hallways at night like some great unwashed mass of medieval lepers. And where all the men are spoiled fratboy rapists, self-deluding, sleazy leftists or wholesome (white!) basketball players who love their mamas.

I would like to challenge anyone who has been to college in the past twenty years to find something in "Charlotte Simmons" that is remotely believable. I live about fifteen minutes from Wolfe's model for Dupont University and grew up in Western North Carolina and I can tell you this book might as well be set on Mars, as far as I'm concerned. Reading it requires a suspension of disbelief quite a bit greater than that needed to enjoy "Harry Potter," and I literally threw this book across the room no less than a dozen times whilst reading it.

Basically, what I learned is that Tom Wolfe is either actually a sexist, racist, elitist, ignorant, patronizing scumbag or he's so woefully out of touch that he doesn't realize this book makes him seem like all of those things.

Io sono Charlotte Simmons...e sono una figa di legno

Nelle prime duecento pagine per quanto il libro sia scritto bene e dia un impatto realistico dei giovani studenti del college, Charlotte Simmons è davvero come da titolo. Credo che il mio problema principale con questo libro sia che la Charlotte Simmons della cena di gala mi piace di più di quella originale, che veniva dalle montagne.

Il resto sui giovani, l'alcool, "il pathois del cazzo fottuto", i ricchi, le confraternite e il sesso mi sembra più che altro la ridicolizzazione di chi muore di invidia e allora ti fa la morale. Alla fine, aveva ragione Laurie. Il college è l'unico momento nella vita in cui puoi davvero sperimentare tutto, compresa la libertà.

I can totally understand why readers would criticize Tom Wolfe for dealing in stereotypes, for overwriting, and for taking a bit of a weird turn with the whole neuroscience thing. But I still enjoyed reading I Am Charlotte Simmons, and I still think it's a good book by a great writer. I went to college within recent memory, and am a graduate student now. While Wolfe plays up various aspects of the prestigious university experience, he's not all that far off the mark. His imitations of rap music are absolutely terrible and he doesn't seem to get college profs all that well, but fortunately those aspects of the book weren't too overpowering. The cartoony characters and ::::::STATIC::::: are just part of Wolfe's over-the-top, big-over-small style, and I've made my peace with that.

The thing that makes Wolfe's writing great is also the thing that makes it the most uncomfortable to read. Love them, hate them, or call them stereotypical, but Wolfe's characters think thoughts that are so egotistical, ridiculous, and raw that you feel embarrassed. Not embarrassed for his characters, but embarrassed because they are a lot more like you than you'd care to admit. The ways Wolfe's characters think about how others think about them are totally shallow and ridiculous, but they also aren't that far from reality. And while Wolfe is definitely a bit of a grandpa complaining about kids these days, with their "f*** patois" and hookup culture, he's also correct about how ridiculous and hedonistic that stuff can be. Even more importantly for a nerd like me, Wolfe hits geeks and change-the-world activists right where it hurts. Adam's megalomaniacal rants are ridiculous, but I can see a lot of myself in him. Randy and Camille are perhaps overly aggressive as activists, and Camille's rants about sexism veer towards the obnoxious and absurd, but I have definitely interacted with people like her (and understood where they were coming from). It's uncomfortable, it's ugly, and it's what Tom Wolfe does best.

Brings back lots of college memories. This could almost be a required reading for any teenager planning to join the madness, in a good sense, that is college in the United States.

Frickin' fabulous, can't put down, addictive read!