Being in Japan, I missed most of the media hype that invariably must accompany a new Tom Wolfe book. I’m sure this book has already been reviewed to death, and I’m fearful of inadvertently repeating what has already been said, or worse, missing something that everyone else picked up on. Apologies in advance if I do either.
This is a long book (771 pages, densely printed). And yet the main plot is surprisingly simple, and something you’ve already seen many times in numerous teen movies. Nervous insecure teen-age girl gets attention from several different guys. She at first falls for the really popular good-looking one, only to discover what a jerk he is. She briefly rebounds off another character, who is sensitive but not a good fit, and then ends up with the really caring but strong guy who’s been there for her all along. (Oh yeah, warning, spoilers, etc.)
There are several sub-plots weaving their way through this story. Hoyt Thorpe, the frat boy whose fight with a body guard for the governor of California makes him into a campus legend; Jojo Johanssen, the basketball player who enjoys his god-like celebrity status while also struggling to keep his starting position and gets caught in a plagiarizing scandal; and Adam Gellin, a nerdy intellectual convinced he is destiny’s child who wants to loose his virginity, seeks to write a newspaper story about the Hoyt’s brawl with the body-guard, and is also caught up in the plagiarizing scandal.
But neither the main plot nor the sub-plots are really the point. The point is Wolfe as a social commentator writing about life in the modern American University. As such, much of the book is just “hanging out” with the characters and observing various aspects of college life. Each sub-plot has it’s own set of supporting characters. We get to hang out in the fraternity house, witness the various rivalries on the basketball team, and get to know all the young intellectuals who run the school paper.
Wolfe is a good enough writer that he manages to pull this off. At times he’s in danger of falling in love with his own prose, and there are a lot of repetitive segments. (Often I wanted to say: “All right, I get it already, her roommates a bitch.” Or, “the guy’s a nerd, I get it I get it.”) But for the most part it works. You just need to know it’s a slow paced book going into it, and if you can handle that, it is pretty fun hanging out with these characters, and at times I did feel like I was reliving various aspects of my own college days.
Via the magic of the Internet, I was able to watch Tom Wolfe’s appearance on “The Daily Show”, in which he talked about his research for the book. The obvious question is, even with all the research Tom Wolfe did, can an old man like him reach across the generation gap and accurately write about the modern University campus. Unfortunately, as a Calvin College graduate, I’m not qualified to answer this question. I probably know less about the modern secular University scene than Tom Wolfe does.
But whether Wolfe gets it right or not, the beauty of his writing is that he makes you believe it’s true. Wolfe is a powerful enough writer that he can create a seemingly real world inside his pages, regardless of how well it corresponds to the actual real world outside. Just as I was sucked into the pages of “The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test” even though I couldn’t vouch for its accuracy, so I was sucked into the pages of “Charlotte Simmons.” I suspected Wolfe was exaggerating at times, but I didn’t really care. It was real enough while I was reading it.
I enjoyed the sub plots a lot more than I enjoyed the main plot. Perhaps this is simply because I’m a man, and enjoy reading stories about men more than Charlotte’s romantic troubles.
The first 500 pages or so I thought were really interesting. For the last 200 pages, Charlotte’s love life really dominates, and all the other story threads get pushed to the side. These last 200 pages I thought were really awful, but again, maybe this is just because I’m a man.
The ending is almost too happy, and reminiscent of a morality play in which all of the characters get their appropriate rewards. Most of the major characters undergo some sort of transformation. They were all provided with appropriate motivation for their transformations, but the dramatic sudden changes still seemed a bit contrived to me.
Of course the kids like happy endings, and I must confess I myself was smiling at how well everything turned out as I read the last few pages. But the ending, in which all of Charlotte’s problems are solved because she found the right boyfriend, is certainly an unfeminist view, and about 50 years behind its time. (Either that, or perhaps some sort of satire on the whole genre itself that just went over my head.)
Most of the passages concerning Charlotte are written in the 3rd person subjective. I’d be interested to know how accurately Wolfe is able to convey the thoughts of an 18-year-old girl, but this is another question I’m not qualified to answer. If any of you females have read this book, I’d be interested in your perspective.
Nevertheless, a few thoughts of my own on the character of Charlotte Simmons…
Wolfe remarked on “The Daily Show” that sometimes “the man from mars approach” can have benefits to a writer, and he obviously works this into the story with Charlotte Simmons. He even acknowledges it in the dialogue. “You’re not just a freshman. …It was like you just arrived from Mars. You know what I mean? You don’t come here affected by a lot of—a lot of the usual sh—stuff. It’s like you cam here with clear eyes, and you see things exactly like they are.”
“Sparta, North Carolina, is a long way from here, but it isn’t on Mars.” [Charlotte replied]
As the conservative, sheltered country girl from North Carolina, Charlotte acts as the point of entry to the story for Wolfe’s older readers. She’s just as shocked and stunned by modern college life as any one of Wolfe’s generation might be.
But, how much is she simply a literary device, and how well does she work as a real character? In the beginning of the book she occasionally seems too much like a prude. I believe there are students like Charlotte who don’t drink or have sex, but I can’t believe, in the 21st century, that they would spend most of their freshman year with their mouths wide open, completely shocked by the fact that other people engage in these activities.
The point of incredulity for me was when, 200 pages into the book, Charlotte was still reprimanding another student for saying, “fuck.” (And then again 500 pages in). Wolfe does a good job of imitating the speech, “Fuck Patois” as he calls it, of the modern college campus, and this is a credit to him as a writer. But can you imagine a modern student at a secular university objecting to it? Even at Calvin, a conservative Christian school, many people spoke in “Fuck Patois”. Even if Charlotte came from the mountains, has she never seen any movies? And after a few weeks at university, wouldn’t she be so numb to the word “fuck” that she wouldn’t even notice it any more?
Another thing I don’t buy is Charlotte’s first impression of her classmates. When Charlotte first meets her freshman year classmates, she keeps thinking about how young they look. “Neither looked more than fifteen or sixteen! Babies dropping their voices a couple of octaves in a desperate desire to sound like men…He had such a tender coating of baby fat over his cheeks, neck, and torso, it made Charlotte think of diapers and talcum powder.” Et Cetera
The 18-year-old Charlotte doesn’t think the freshman class looks like babies. That’s the middle aged Tom Wolfe talking. I had the same problem with “Norwegian Wood”, another book about college life by a middle-aged author.
I’m much more inclined to identify with John Knowles’s description in “A Separate Peace”: “When you’re 17, 17 is the natural, right and perfect age for a person to be. And all the other ages are arranged in a pyramid either leading up to 17, or leading down from it.” (I’m quoting from memory, but its something like that.)
And yet I identified with some of Charlotte’s struggles as an insecure freshman. Reading the beginning of the book I felt like I was reliving my first few months at Calvin. Sure I had come from the notorious “Christian High”, but I came with more acquaintances than true friends. My roommate was from South Christian, and came with his social circle already established, just like Charlotte’s roommate. He sized me up, and then dismissed me as not worth his time, much like Charlotte’s roommate. And, like Charlotte, I remember the first few months of freshman year mostly watching other people go out and have fun, and feeling on the outside.
Final notes: The politics of the book are fairly neutral. Wolfe as the social conservative cannot resist poking a little fun at the pompous liberal professor who is still stuck in the sixties, but at least the liberals come off better than the homophobic frat boys.
And the scene where she looses her virginity to a frat boy, only to find out he doesn’t really care about her, is heartbreaking, if not somewhat cliché and predictable. I’d like to think that at this point in the game, there’s more than enough literature already warning girls about what guys are really after, but there still seems to be an awful lot of naïve girls around. In that respect, maybe this book should be required reading for all incoming Freshmen girls.
Link of the Day
Ouch! The Japan Times has started a registration procedure. There goes a lot of good linking material. Well, it was good well it lasted.
This may only be of interest to me, but I see via my sister's blog that my little cousin has started up a blog as well at Hockey Playaaaaaaa.
Most of us are now at the stage of life where we have just getting used to the idea of reaching adulthood ourselves, and now seeing the younger generation move up behind us. I remember my mom taking me to the hospital when my cousin was born. My uncle offered me a slice of his pizza, and I debated with myself whether it would be rude to actually take it, and if I would get a lecture later if I did. I ended up turning it down. Sometimes I regret that.
But the point is, ever since then he's been stuck in my mind as a little kid, and now he's older than I was at the time. And his blog is (visually at least) better than this one.
Video Version 1
Video Version 2
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