I wish I could give this a minus star

I like this book, though it's really looooong.

Some paragraphs go on for a page or two. But once you get into it, the sentences flow and take you to unexpected nuggets of satiric humor and ironic wit. Of course, the dialogue and characterizations are hilarious too.

I would not say that one "loves" or "likes" either Charlotte Simmons or the rest of the characters---which are not prerequisites for the overall quality of a novel---but they ring true. As their psycholoy is revealed, their personalities and choices become patently plausible, invevitable really.

I'm not sure I "liked" the ending, but again, liking it is neither here nor there in terms of quality. I liked it because it seemed a bit idealized and in someways fulfilling, which is also the reason I didn't like it because thus far, the novel had seemed to follow an inevitable and necessary trajectory so that this "happy ending" of sorts, seems a bit out of place.

However, within this ideal situation that the protagonist finds herself in toward the end, reasons for her ultimate choice are hinted at that she herself is barely aware of, and because of this, who she is, what she learns and all that jazz, says a lot about her that clearly demote her from heroine to basically a person one may not like. She has not learned all that much in fact. She is the social animal that is motivated and affected by societal values; she is not above status as defined by not only peers but also by the larger American culture.

I wanted Charlotte to "do the right thing," I really did. But given her experiences, the ending makes sense and the ambiguity about who she is and what she's becoming, are really apt, I think.

I liked this book for the wry comic turns, the wording and syntax are "ambrosial" (a term used by a character) and the intellect is constantly stimulated. As far as the characters and their ultimate development, it's depressing. And not only because they in effect are "evil" or anything like that, but because they mirror back a litttle (or a lot) of ourselves, especially for those who have travailed the path to Higher Ed. The depression hits because the choices made are done by people like you or I, and their all too human desires, ambitions, and psychology make it hard to judge.

You want to identify with a character who is basically good and incapable of corruption because then you can tell yourself you identify with that character. But there are none---Charlotte hardly qualifies as a classic heroine and much less the supporting characters.

This is definitely a Naturalistic novel with all of its social animals trapped by forces out of their control. They are all too human and what the novel has to say about our present culture resonates long after you put it down. While reading it, though, the humor and irony and syntactical brilliance are at the fore.

The Times of London recently ran a story about a book on 13 unsolved questions of science. For example, the fact that we can only account for four percent of the universe, or that the fundamental constants of physics may have been different in the distant past, judging by the way light travels around the cosmos. One mystery in particular is that of consciousness.

Neuroscientists, for example, say that the entire idea of free will is an illusion - a trick our brains play on us. We are really walking brain machines that obey chemicals and instinctual commands hardwired into us by our Darwinian forebears. Guts - grace under pressure - isn’t so much a sign of character as good body chemistry.

In light of that, it might be time to take another look at a recent novel that was savaged from several different fronts earlier in this decade - Tom Wolfe’s “I Am Charlotte Simmons.” Among its dubious honors was taking the Literary Review’s “Bad Sex in Fiction” award, recognizing distinction in the novel for awkwardly or poorly rendered erotic scenes.

I’m not going to tackle Wolfe’s prowess in this regard - his defense was that he was trying to deliberately make the scenes awkward and unappetizing. Judge for yourself. There was also plenty of criticism that Wolfe had either written an entirely unnecessary novel with the revelation - Gasp! - that college kids have wild, unprotected sex, or that the novel reads like a puritanical 70-year-old man trying to describe a world he neither belonged to nor understood.

Judge for yourself. There is a certain artistic hubris apparent in the novel, though you have to admire the guts of a man of Wolfe’s age encountering the milieu he describes. Instead, I think these criticisms ignored the real crux of the novel - free will. Mr. Starling, the professor says it plainly: “If man is an animal, to what extent does his genetic code, unbeknownst to him, control his life?”

Charlotte Simmons is Wolfe’s lab rat, an overly-innocent, sheltered high school graduate from a working class family who heads for Dupont University (a loose stand-in for Duke) with the hopes of her community and their unshakeable faith in her ability to hogtie success. Instead, Charlotte falls into the familiar traps of popularity and status, wanting to fit in and feeling left out. She stands ready to sacrifice herself, intellectually and sexually, in order to belong. At various points in the novel, Charlotte is contrasted with the laboratory experiments of the school’s doctors, which find that a culture can overwhelm the impulses of an individual.

One of the beauties of this perplexing book is that Wolfe, by setting the story in a university, is able to send up the progress of human civilization - that in the midst of all these great ideas are hormonal kids barely out of their teens, getting drunk and chasing after cheap sex, swearing all the way through. And life really doesn’t change all that much beyond the campus, even if the ideas remain. But what of the soul? Our concept of the soul has mutated along the way - the Judaic tradition borrowing from the Greek gives us a soul that is part of a community, while Christianity proclaimed God’s love for the individual. The Enlightenment then took the individual’s importance and replaced God with rationalism, meaning that we are worth something because we exist, even if there is no God. But neuroscience, like all science, promises knowledge that can be corrupted if it is used to turn mankind into masses of thoughtless automatons in the service of their nerve impulses.

This is why Wolfe is perfect for this particular story. Wolfe’s fiction is largely about status - about being and belonging. If someone does not belong, more often than not, it is a revelation that the character neither seeks nor fully understands, but the revelation is almost religious in nature. All truth becomes hypocritical because no one adheres to it. Whatever truth is revealed is usually at the expense of another, but in the end, all characters, fully-realized, are Darwinian ladder climbers who greedily pick each other off and gain their own revelations by inches. Somehow, they find a place where they belong.

When Charlotte sets off for school, she wants to create a life for herself, a “life of the mind.” In the end, Charlotte loses the person she was and becomes something else - a less uptight but more knowing individual, changed by her surroundings, but determined to be whoever it is that she now is. She is in control.

What I notice in this book, as I did in his earlier “A Man In Full,” is a phenomenon I would call “stealth Christianity.” Charlotte is so obviously a naïve, church girl, and yet this is only vaguely hinted at. There is little to bind her to her family other than their shared monetary status and the culture of good folks from the mountains. Yet this is the sort of sheltered saved girl who goes to college and discovers a world that either pays lip service to Christ or ignores Him completely. Charlie Croker, the hero of “A Man In Full,” becomes born again, only in the grip of Epictetus, the Roman philosopher instead of Jesus. In Wolfe’s fiction, which seems to catalogue virtually every aspect of modern life, faith is largely absent, hinted at, or sidestepped. The characters are more passionate about politics than God. One wonders if this is deliberate, and I would argue, it almost certainly is.

Wolfe, asked recently in an interview if he believed in God, said no. This surprised me. I had suspected that Wolfe, who revels in brandishing a conservative political worldview, was “hiding his light under a bushel.” But he also said the neuroscientist view, that there is no “ghost in the machine,” renders a life which is bereft of the mysticism that practically all of us would like to believe hides behind our tissue and bones.

The novel, and the neuroscientist view of our existence, also brings up an interesting point in a Christian discussion. Does it mean there is a biological explanation for the fallen human condition? Is the “sinful nature” something that can be found in the genome? Is the idea that we are “born into sin” something more than the simple poetry of the King James Bible? Is sin wound so tightly in the DNA that one cannot rip it apart from the human existence without destroying an essential part of us all? By novel’s end, Charlotte resolves that even if the soul is a myth, that myth is part of who she is. Discovering who she is will take the rest of her life, regardless of whether there is anything after.

Whether or not Wolfe’s novel is a success or failure, he does deserve some credit for tackling a question that science serves up for us all, whether we have the guts to face it or not. If this column reads like it wrote itself, then perhaps the neuroscientists aren’t far off after all.

All the stars and more! *NO SPOILERS*

I just graduated college a little over a year ago, and this book is so accurate. I have met the people in this book, albeit they had different names. I have had the conversations that Charlotte had with those people. I became noticeably upset when Charlotte made mistakes and other characters proved to be exactly who they originally appeared to be. I wanted to stop them from making bad decisions and have them hear the voice of reason.

The book really struck a chord with me when I saw events that I had only experienced the beginnings of play out in full, and then I laughed, gasped, or cringed (sometimes out loud). The book shows the consequences of wanting to fit in, wanting to please people, and of not staying true to yourself in a college culture that can be self-destructive. The book shows a fundamental character change that is so disturbing, I couldn't stop reading. I kept wishing for certain events to occur that would provide closure, but it never happened because characters were too far gone.

Tom Wolfe wrote a fantastic book. The writing is accessible and articulate. He did a great job of making multi-dimensional characters by providing backstories and developing their arc every so often (Jojo, Hoyt, Adam, Charlotte, etc.). Also, the writing is articulate and detailed enough that impactful scenes drive the point home and you can picture the happiness, distress, sincerity, or duplicitousness of the characters as Wolfe details their mannerisms, thoughts, and body language.

In summary, "But everybody else is doing it, so why can't I do it too!"

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.

This book was like a nemesis for me over the last few weeks I've been reading it. So many times I wanted to just put it down and forget I'd ever seen it, but then when I mentioned it to people I got this reaction like "what? Tom Wolfe? He's the best!" and so my curiosity piqued, I'd pick it back up. Now after careful consideration I have crafted the following critique. Note I have only ever attempted one other Tom Wolfe book (Electric Kool-aid Acid Test) and didn't make it all the way through. But here are my thoughts on Charlotte Simmons as it's own unique piece of work:

Writing Style

Now people tell me that Tom Wolfe is this great writer. Reading this book though, I do NOT see it. It reads to me like a young author who is so hell-bent on sounding impressive, and hasn't yet learned how to edit. Some of that could be taste, I definitely enjoy a "show me" versus "tell me" style of writing, but I would argue that this critique is objectively true as well. Here are three key things I disliked about the writing:

1. Colloquialism: I honestly don't mind colloquial dialogue in a novel. Done well (Twain) it can be a great device to further seed the reader's imagination with who this character is. Done right. To me, that means consistent. When not done consistently, it can read as a mockery (see points below re:racism.) If you're going to say someone says "dat" instead of "that" then it is unlikely that they also say "it does not" in the same sentence. "Dat's not wot we do, it does not work" - see how that actually doesn't sound anything like what a real person with that colloquial language style would say? It's because the first half is one way and the second half forgets about it. I'd also say, if you're going to write colloquially, do it, don't half do it and then have the narrator fix the other half? Like "'That's riioght, we're with them' they-am." Why not just put 'they-am' in the original quote? Why remind me how bad you are at this?

2. Big words for the sake of big words: now, I realize that some of the characters in this novel were big word people. That's fine. Put it in their dialogue. We'll get to this more in the narration section, but big words don't fit when you're in the POV of the "dumb jock" but all of a sudden his thoughts read like a poet laureate wrote them?

3. Treating me like an idiot: give your readers some kind of dignity. There was one point where two girls ACTUALLY had a conversation about what sarcasm was and what the different levels were and this went on for 3 pages. Give me a break. I didn't need that, the characters doing it (sorority girls) didn't need that - they were born knowing that. What is this? I physically rolled my eyes during that section it was so bad.

Narrator

That last point actually rolls into another big gripe - the narrator. Man. It's like this guy has never read a narrated book before. There are two main types of narrators, the omnipotent narrator (knows all, sees all, is just reporting in third person) and the personal narrator (an actual character, reports in first person)

Wolfe chose an omnipotent narrator, in that case you can either leave the narrator completely bland, or you have it reflect the personalities of the characters who's POV you're currently representing. In a multifacet book like this you normally go after #2. What did Wolfe do? a mix of both. The narrator never completely reflected the types of thoughts that would mirror the current character (you would be hard pressed to make me believe that any basketball star would spend THAT amount of time thinking about the slave / master symbology of their lives...) but it also never faded into the background. It was RIDICULOUS to the point of being painful.

Characters

This might be because the characters themselves were so painfully lacking in definition. Wolfe sets this book up like he's going to look at archetypes - right? So at first you're willing to give him some slack to set up these absolutely obviously awful caricatures of people. The dumb jock, the dweeb, the frat boy, the prissy girl, the sorority girl, etc. But then they don't come out...right. And not in a "oh they turn out to be more dimensional" way, but in a "they turn out to be a mishmash of his own thoughts apparently" way. I think this has a lot to do with the bleed-over narrator. He gives Adam-esque thoughts to Jojo and Charlotte-esque thoughts to Hoyt. So it just doesn't work.

Sexism / Racism / Homophobia and other ills

This was the most painful of all. You get the sense the author is none of the above, but is so intent on proving that, that it doesn't work? You know? The whole thing with Charlotte LITERALLY LOSING HER MIND over a boy. Come on. I know girls can get a little cray cray but that was over the top. And the actual narrator quotes of how she responded so positively "the way girls do" to Adam asserting himself aggressively. What the ... is that?

All the white vs. black player stuff, and the gay rights stuff, all missed the mark. Just poorly done.

The End

Probably the only interesting part of the whole book is the end when Charlotte questions herself on whether she ever wanted a "life of the mind" or just to be recognized, at any cost, and where her intelligence got her recognized at home, that wasn't it at Dupont so she went another way. THAT was an interesting thought. Start there, with the almost double cross from the main character and move backwards rewriting the WHOLE thing. It's almost like the plot points could still work, with a little toning down in places, but just needs to be rewritten by a more skilled author.

I know that's a hard line to take on someone so beloved but this was my honest opinion that I had before I realized (over the course of reading and hearing from other people commenting on what I was reading) that he was loved at all. If there's another book I should try instead I'm open to hearing it, but for now, I'm a big fat no to this book and this author.

Hace varios años leí 'Soy Charlotte Simmons', el retorno a la novela de un famoso cronista del zeitgeist. Años después de haber escrito aquella sátira de la superficial y obsesiva sociedad de los ochenta que fue The Bonfire of the Vanities, el señor Wolfe se fue a meter a una universidad de Ivy League para hacerse una idea de la vida estudiantil de la sociedad actual. Y por supuesto, contar una historia mordaz sobre ella.

El resultado termina siendo una de aquellas novelas que pudo haber sido mucho más si tan sólo hubiera sabido qué quería ser. Si una sátira hecha y derecha o la verdadera apreciación de un viejito de cómo estudian y cómo son las juventudes de hoy.

De que sí, la historia es graciosísima. Se trata de una chica de alguna de las Carolinas, bastante pobre (nivel 'dirt poor') pero bastante inteligente que se gana una beca para estudiar en prestigiosa y ficticia Universidad de Dupont. El resto de la novela cuenta su gradual y atropellado descubrimiento de un ambiente de decadencia sexual, de fiestas salvajes, de corrupción política, de influyentismo de los patrocinadores de la universidad, de conflictos de raza y clase, de petulancia académica y pseudo-intelectualidad podrida.

Los otros tres personajes principales son quienes en algunos puntos de la trama se convierten en los amores de Charlotte. Todos como representantes de la 'juventud en éxtasis' de un país en aquel interludio 2001-2008 en que estuvo la mayor parte de mi vida pre-universitaria y universitaria.

Uno, Jojo, es un 'jock' bastante descerebrado, cuya transformación va encaminada a ponerse las pilas en la escuela y en la cancha so pena de perder su lugar en la selección de basket a un joven negro. Otro, quien podría pasar como el villano de la historia, es Hoyt: un cuate no-tan-bien que se convierte en frat boy y donjuán creyendo que pasándola bomba en la universidad es el camino para conseguirse un trabajo en Wall Street. Y por último Adam, un destacado estudiante judío que se siente el último baluarte de la intelectualidad en medio del desenfreno de Dupont.

Uno de mis errores fue leerlo en español. Su traducción era peninsular, así que hube de pasar seiscientas páginas entre modismos de 'guay' y similares. Es mejor leerlo en inglés y sentir el verdadero color del lenguaje. La mayoría de los episodios son hilarantes, incluso desde el principio, con la historia de un gobernador de California que tiene aventuras en el campus. Wolfe ganó incluso un premio a 'mal sexo en ficción' debido a cierto pasaje que, en atención a no dar spoilers, es como el clímax de la novela.

Hoewel de personages wat cliché zijn uitgewerkt (het brave plattelandsmeisje, het rijkeluiszoontje, de nerd, ... ) is dit toch een goed geschreven boek over het leven aan een Amerikaanse universiteit. Wel niet zo goed als ‘Het vreugdevuur der ijdelheden’ van dezelfde auteur.

Tom Wolfe hat mit "Ich bin Charlotte Simmons" einen großen amerikanischen Universitäts-Roman geschrieben. 1988 war mein Lieblingsbuch "Fegefeuer der Eitelkeiten" von Tom Wolfe. 2012 habe ich "Back To Blood" mit ähnlicher Begeisterung gelesen. Aber den Roman "Ich bin Charlotte Simmons" von 2005 habe ich damals aufgrund einer Kritik (ich glaube im Spiegel) ausgelassen. Knapp 20 Jahre später wollte ich mir doch noch ein eigenes Bild machen. Zum Glück.

In diesem Ziegelstein von einem Taschenbuch mit knapp tausend Seiten geht es um Charlotte. Sie kommt aus einem kleinen ländlichen Ort. Sie ist die erste aus dem Ort, die es auf die renommierte Dupont Universität geschafft hat. Mit ihrer konservativen, zurückhaltenden Art landet sie in Sodom und Gomorrha. Sie wird im ersten Semester vor allem drei Bekanntschaften machen: Jojo ist ein etwas dümmlicher, weißer Basketballspieler im Uni-Team. Adam ist ein verpeilter Student, der zwischen Reporter und Intellektueller changiert. Hoyt ist das unsympathische Großmaul einer Uni-Verbindung. Letzterer wird Charlotte in eine Depression stürzen. Die Fahrt nach Hause und die Depression Charlottes ist einer der dunkelsten Abschnitte des Buches. Hier gibt es keinerlei ironische Brechung. Generell ist das Buch mit Ausnahme dieses Abschnittes aber in einem satirischen, leichten Ton geschrieben.

Trotz Längen in der Handlung, die bei dem Umfang nicht so überraschend sind, habe ich mich zu keinem Zeitpunkt gelangweilt. Das liegt daran, dass Tom Wolfe so gut schreiben kann. Egal ob er ein Basketball-Spiel, ein Seminar oder eine Studenten-Party beschreibt, egal ob er Klassenunterschiede, Neid, politische Intrigen thematisiert, er langweilt nie. Es geht aber über reine Unterhaltung hinaus. Der Mikrokosmos der amerikanischen Uni-Gesellschaft wird schmerzhaft genau ausgeleuchtet. Ein Meisterwerk.

Non posso dire che mi abbia deluso perchè non ho mai letto niente di questo scrittore e non sapevo cosa aspettarmi. Posso dire che il personaggio di Charlotte mi ha deluso, è una ragazza tipo "voglio ma non posso" e poi .. alla fine il suo "fidanzamento" (non dico altro per non far scoprire la storia) mi ha lasciato veramente male.

I remember a bunch of higher ed folks in my orbit reading this (and discussing it, and writing about it, and discussing it more) when it was released. I think the general consensus was "nope." I've had it on my shelf for what seems like an eon, and I finally decided to dive in.

I've not read Wolfe before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Is it ridiculous? Yup. Gratuitous? Oh yeah. Way too long? You know it. But I kind of loved it. Dylan Baker's reading on the audiobook is a performance for the ages, which might'e helped me like it more.

Anyway, I'll say this—after working in higher education on and off for 14 years, this book gets a LOT right, even if it exaggerates pretty much everything.

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.