Tom Wolfe has published dozens of books (The Pump House Gang, The Right Stuff, Bonfire of Vanities, etc.) during his tenure as one of America's foremost contemporary authors. Here he chronicles the freshman year of a poor scholarship student at a prestigious eastern university where wealth and privelege seem to necessitate debauchery and corruption.
Well-nestled (read: isolated) in Appalachia is the town of Sparta, North Carolina--lifelong home to one Charlotte Simmons. Accolades aplenty have showered Charlotte for her scholastic merits; culminating in a full-ride scholarship to illustrious DuPont University. It's here where "she's certain to find people like herself, people who actually have a life of the mind, people whose concept of the future is something beyond Saturday night . . ." (p.19). In a general sense there are people like her at DuPont; but more generally there's the insatiable depravity of everyone else: vulgar boys in her dorm's only co-ed bathroom, a roommate who "sexiles" her to the hallway, protocol binge drinking, drug use, obligatory profanity, rampant cheating, smut-laced lyrics blasted 24/7, etc. It's as far from intellectual utopia (or even Sparta's redneck n'er-do-wells) as her beloved Beethoven is from Dr. Diss's perversity-fueled raps.
Fortunately not all's examined through Charlotte's eyes. Other parts of the college swirl are experienced through peripheral characters like frat boy Hoyt Thorpe, nerd Adam Gelin, and basketball player Joseph 'Jo-Jo' Johansen. It's a world where "hookups" are tantamount to social validation, where 'winter formal' is code for 'decadent orgy', and where the lifeblood of academia--the faculty--must submit to a bureaucratic empire or face termination.
Anyone who loathes hearing the words "read" and "book" in the same sentence should provide for this one exception. Wolfe gets it. He is as good as it is (in the English language) with descriptive realism and social dynamics. Some people (everyone) may be more than a little unsettled by the raunchy-ness of it all, albeit genuine Americana. But forget Animal House or any of its pathetic derivatives. Wolfe refuses to lampoon degenerate behavior without revealing its frighteningly destructive consequences. In essence, 'Charlotte Simmons' elucidates twenty-first century youth culture; reinventing the wheel to some degree with its depiction of the collegiate microcosm.
Ironic Footnote: Wolfe researched several colleges for this book including Duke University, where he noticed the vigorous influence of lacrosse players on the raucous campus social scene. 'Charlotte Simmons' was published in 2004.
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