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Overview

Tom Wolfe, the master social novelist of our time, the spot-on chronicler of all things contemporary and cultural, presents a sensational new novel about life, love, and learning—or the lack of it—amid today's American colleges.

Our story unfolds at fictional Dupont University: those Olympian halls of scholarship housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.

As Charlotte encounters the paragons of Dupont's privileged elite—her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus—she is seduced by the heady glamour of acceptance, betraying both her values and upbringing before she grasps the power of being different—and the exotic allure of her own innocence.

With his trademark satirical wit and famously sharp eye for telling detail, Wolfe draws on extensive observations at campuses across the country to immortalize the early-21st-century college-going experience.

I Am Charlotte Simmons

Editorial Reviews

Michael Dirda

So: sermon, melodrama, dystopian vision -- I Am Charlotte Simmons partakes of all these, and does so stunningly. But it's still as much polemic as novel. One closes the book feeling soiled by its cloacal vision and emotionally manipulated by its author. Rhetoric -- the art of persuasion -- lies at the heart of all writing, but we dislike feeling too overtly manipulated, and works that blatantly force our emotions along precise paths we dub inartistic, mere propaganda or programmatic writing with a social or political agenda. I Am Charlotte Simmons is such a work. I couldn't stop reading it -- who could? This is Tom Wolfe, after all -- but that didn't prevent me from regarding the author's premise, characters and views as hardly more than an ill-tempered, Mrs. Grundy-like rant against reckless youth and this immoral modern age. Tom Wolfe can make words dance and sing and perform circus tricks, he can make the reader sigh with pleasure before his arias of coloratura description, he can do just about anything in these pages with words, including exaggerate, distort and rant.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

What New York City finance was to Wolfe in the 1980s and Southern real estate in the '90s, the college campus is in this sprawling, lurid novel: a flashpoint for cultural standards and the setting for a modern parable. At elite Dupont (a fictional school based on Wolfe's research at places like Stanford and Michigan), the author unspools a standard college story with a 21st-century twist. jocks, geeks, prudes and partiers are up to their usual exploits, only now with looser sexual mores and with the aid of cell phones. Wolfe begins, as he might say, with a "bango": two frat boys tangle with the bodyguard of a politician they've caught in a sex act. We then race through plots involving students' candy-colored interactions with each other and inside their own heads: Charlotte, a cipher and prodigy from a conservative Southern family whose initiation into dorm life Wolfe milks to much dramatic advantage; Jojo, a white basketball player struggling with race, academic guilt and job security; Hoyt, a BMOC frat boy with rage issues; Adam, a student reporter cowed by alpha males. As in Wolfe's other novels, characters typically fall into two categories: superior types felled by their own vanity and underdogs forced to rely on wiles. But what in Bonfire of the Vanities were powerful competing archetypes playing out cultural battles here seem simply thin and binary types. Wolfe's promising setup never leads to a deeper contemplation of race, sex or general hierarchies. Instead, there is a virtual recitation of facts, albeit colorful ones, with little social insight beyond the broadly obvious. (Athletes getting a free pass? The sheltered receiving rude awakenings?) Boasting casual sex and machismo-fueled violence, the novel seems intent on shocking, but little here will surprise even those well past their term-paper years. Wolfe's adrenalized prose remains on display-e.g., a basketball game seen from inside a player's head-and he weaves a story that comes alive with cinematic vividness. But, like a particular kind of survey course, readers are likely to breeze through these pages-yet find themselves with little to show for it. (Nov. 9) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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Library Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780312424442
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 8/30/2005
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 752
Sales rank: 144,070
Product dimensions: 5.46 (w) x 8.28 (h) x 1.37 (d)

Meet the Author

Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his B.A. at Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in American studies at Yale. He lives in New York City.

Biography

Tom Wolfe was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He was educated at Washington and Lee (B.A., 1951) and Yale (Ph.D., American Studies, 1957) Universities. In December 1956, he took a job as a reporter on the Springfield (Massachusetts) Union. This was the beginning of a ten-year newspaper career, most of it as a general assignment reporter. For six months in 1960 he served as The Washington Post's Latin American correspondent and won the Washington Newspaper Guild's foreign news prize for his coverage of Cuba.

In 1962 he became a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune and, in addition, one of the two staff writers (Jimmy Breslin was the other) of New York magazine, which began as the Herald Tribune's Sunday supplement. While still a daily reporter for the Herald Tribune, he completed his first book, a collection of articles about the flamboyant Sixties written for New York and Esquire and published in 1965 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux as The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. The book became a bestseller and established Wolfe as a leading figure in the literary experiments in nonfiction that became known as the New Journalism.

In 1968 he published two bestsellers on the same day: The Pump House Gang, made up of more articles about life in the Sixties, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a nonfiction story of the hippie era. In 1970 he published Radical Chick & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, a highly controversial book about racial friction in the United States. The first section was a detailed account of a party Leonard Bernstein gave for the Black Panthers in his Park Avenue duplex, and the second portrayed the inner workings of the government's poverty program.

Even more controversial was Wolfe's 1975 book on the American art world, The Painted Word. The art world reacted furiously, partly because Wolfe kept referring to it as the "art village," depicting it as a network of no more than three thousand people, of whom about three hundred lived outside the New York metropolitan area. In 1976 he published another collection, Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, which included his well-known essay "The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening."

In 1979 Wolfe completed a book he had been at work on for more than six years, an account of the rocket airplane experiments of the post-World War II era and the early space program focusing upon the psychology of the rocket pilots and the astronauts and the competition between them. The Right Stuff became a bestseller and won the American Book Award for nonfiction, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Harold Vursell Award for prose style, and the Columbia Journalism Award.

"The right stuff," "radical chic," and "the Me Decade" (sometimes altered to "the Me Generation") all became popular phrases, but Wolfe seems proudest of "good ol' boy," which he had introduced to the written language in a 1964 article in Esquire about Junior Johnson, the North Carolina stock car-racing driver, which was called "The Last American Hero."

Wolfe had been illustrating his own work in newspapers and magazines since the 1950s, and in 1977 began doing a monthly illustrated feature for Harper's magazine called "In Our Time". The book, In Our Time, published in 1980, featured these drawings and many others. In 1981 he wrote a companion to The Painted Word entitled From Bauhaus to Our House, about the world of American architecture.

In 1984 and 1985 Wolfe wrote his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, in serial form against a deadline of every two weeks for Rolling Stone magazine. It came out in book form in 1987. A story of the money-feverish 1980s in New York, The Bonfire of the Vanities was number one of the New York Times bestseller list for two months and remained on the list for more than a year, selling over 800,000 copies in hardcover. It also became the number-one bestselling paperback, with sales above two million.

In 1989 Wolfe outraged the literacy community with an essay in Harper's magazine called "Stalking the Billion-footed Beast." In it he argued that the only hope for the future of the American novel was a Zola-esque naturalism in which the novelist becomes the reporter -- as he had done in writing The Bonfire of the Vanities, which was recognized as the essential novel of America in the 1980s.

In 1996, Wolfe wrote the novella Ambush at Fort Bragg as a two-part series for Rolling Stone. In 1997 it was published as a book in France and Spain and as an audiotape in the United States. An account of a network television magazine show's attempt to trap three soldiers at Fort Bragg into confessing to the murder of one of their comrades, it grew out of what had been intended as one theme in a novel Wolfe was working on at that time. The novel, A Man in Full, was published in November of 1998. The book's protagonists are a sixty-year old Atlanta real estate developer whose empire has begun a grim slide toward bankruptcy and a twenty-three-year-old manual laborer who works in the freezer unit of a wholesale food warehouse in Alameda County, California, owned by the developer. Before the story ends, both have had to face the question of what is it that makes a man "a man in full" now, at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium.

A Man in Full headed the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks and has sold nearly 1.4 million copies in hardcover. The book's tremendous commercial success, its enthusiastic welcome by reviewers, and Wolfe's appearance on the cover of Time magazine in his trademark white suit plus a white homburg and white kid gloves -- along with his claim that his sort of detailed realism was the future of the American novel, if it was going to have one -- provoked a furious reaction among other American novelists, notably John Updike, Norman Mailer, and John Irving.

Wolfe's latest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, explores the unique antics of college life. He lives in New York City with his wife, Sheila; his daughter, Alexandra; and his son, Tommy.

Author biography courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

1. Also Known As:
  
  Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (full name)
2. Hometown:
  
  New York, New York
1. Date of Birth:
  
  March 2, 1931
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Richmond, Virginia
1. Education:
  
  B.A. (cum laude), Washington and Lee University, 1951; Ph.D. in American Studies, Yale University, 1957
2. Website:
  
  http://www.tomwolfe.com

Read an Excerpt

I Am Charlotte Simmons

By Tom Wolfe

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Copyright © 2004 Tom Wolfe
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-374-28158-0

Prologue

The Dupont Man

Every time the men's room door opened, the amped-up onslaught of Swarm, the band banging out the concert in the theater overhead, came crashing in, ricocheting off all the mirrors and ceramic surfaces until it seemed twice as loud. But then an air hinge would close the door, and Swarm would vanish, and you could once again hear students drunk on youth and beer being funny or at least loud as they stood before the urinals.

Two of them were finding it amusing to move their hands back and forth in front of the electric eyes to make the urinals keep flushing. One exclaimed to the other, "Whattaya mean, a slut? She told me she's been re-virginated!" They both broke up over that.

"She actually said that? 'Re-virginated'?"

"Yeah! 'Re-virginated' or 'born-again virgin,' something like that!"

"Maybe she thinks that's what morning-after pills do!" They both broke up again. They had reached that stage in a college boy's evening at which all comments seem more devastatingly funny if shouted.

Urinals kept flushing, boys kept disintegrating over each other's wit, and somewhere in the long row of toilet stalls somebody was vomiting. Then the door would open and Swarm would come crashing in again.

None of this distracted the only student who at this moment stood before the row of basins. His attention was riveted upon what he saw in the mirror, which was his own fair white face. A gale was blowing in his head. He liked it. He bared his teeth. He had never quite seen them this way before. So even! So white! They vibrated from perfection. And his square jaw... his chin and the perfect cleft in it... his thick thatchy, thatchy, light-brown hair... his brilliant hazel eyes... his! Right there in the mirror-him! All at once he felt like he was a second person looking over his own shoulder. The first him was mesmerized by his own good looks. Seriously. But the second him studied the face in the mirror with detachment and objectivity before coming to the same conclusion, which was that he looked fabulous. Then the two of him inspected his upper arms where they emerged from the sleeves of his polo shirt. He turned sideways and straightened one arm to make the triceps stand out. Jacked, both hims agreed. He had never felt happier in his life.

Not only that, he was on the verge of a profound discovery. It had to do with one person looking at the world through two pairs of eyes. If only he could freeze this moment in his mind and remember it tomorrow and write it down! Tonight he couldn't, not with the ruckus that was going on inside his skull.

"Yo, Hoyt! 'Sup?"

He looked away from the mirror, and there was Vance with his head of blond hair tousled as usual. They were in the same fraternity. He had an overwhelming desire to tell Vance what he had just discovered. He opened his mouth but couldn't find the words, and nothing came out. So he turned his palms upward and smiled and shrugged.

"Lookin' good, Hoyt!" said Vance as he approached the urinals, "lookin' good!"

Hoyt knew it really meant he looked very drunk. But in his current sublime state, what difference did it make?

"Hey, Hoyt," said Vance, who now stood before a urinal, "I saw you upstairs there hittin' on that little tigbiddy! Tell the truth! You really, honestly, think she's hot?"

"Coo Uh gitta bigga boner?" said Hoyt, who was trying to say, "Could I get a bigger boner?" and vaguely realized how far off he was.

"Soundin' good, too!" said Vance. He turned away in order to pay attention to the urinal, but then looked at Hoyt once more and said with a serious tone in his voice, "You know what I think? I think you're demolished, Hoyt. I think it's time to head back while your lights are still on."

Hoyt put up an incoherent argument, but not much of one, and pretty soon they left the building.

Outside it was a mild May night with a pleasant breeze and a full moon whose light created just enough of a gloaming to reveal the singular wavelike roof of the theater, known officially here at the university as the Phipps Opera House, one of the architect Eero Saarinen's famous 1950s Modern creations. The theater's entrance, ablaze with light, cast a path of fire across a plaza and out upon a row of sycamore trees at the threshold of another of the campus' famous ornaments, the Grove. From the moment he founded Dupont University 115 years ago, Charles Dupont, no kin of the du Ponts of Delaware and much more aesthetically inclined, had envisioned an actual grove of academe through which scholars young and old might take contemplative strolls. He had commissioned the legendary landscape artist Gordon Gillette. Swaths of Gillette's genius abounded throughout the campus; but above all there was this arboreal masterpiece, the Grove. Gillette had sent sinuous paths winding through it for the contemplative strolls. But although the practice was discouraged, students often walked straight through the woods, the way Hoyt and Vance walked now beneath the brightness of a big round moon.

The fresh air and peace and quiet of the huge stands of trees began to clear Hoyt's head, or somewhat. He felt as if he were back at that blissful intersection on the graph of drunkenness at which the high has gone as high as it can go without causing the powers of reasoning and coherence to sink off the chart and get trashed.... the exquisite point of perfect toxic poise... He was convinced he could once again utter a coherent sentence and make himself understood, and the blissful gale inside his head blew on.

At first he didn't say much, because he was trying to fix that moment before the mirror in his memory as he and Vance walked through the woods toward Ladding Walk and the heart of campus. But that moment kept slipping away... slipping away... slipping away... and before he knew it, an entirely different notion had bubbled up into his brain. It was the Grove... the Grove... the famous Grove... which said Dupont... and made him feel Dupont in his bones, which in turn made his bones infinitely superior to the bones of everybody in America who had never gone to Dupont. "I'm a Dupont man," he said to himself. Where was the writer who would immortalize that feeling?-the exaltation that lit up his very central nervous system when he met someone and quickly worked into the conversation some seemingly offhand indication that he was in college, and the person would (inevitably) ask, "What college do you go to?" and he would say as evenly and tonelessly as possible, "Dupont," and then observe the reaction. Some, especially women, would be openly impressed. They'd smile, their faces would brighten, they'd say, "Oh! Dupont!" while others, especially men, would tense up and fight to keep their faces from revealing how impressed they were and say, "I see" or "Uhmm" or nothing at all. He wasn't sure which he enjoyed more.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe Copyright © 2004 by Tom Wolfe. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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jimmie55

Posted April 29, 2009

A greart read

"I am Charlotte Simmons" was dismmissed by the critics at the time of its publication As far as I know, it still is. And, it is structured in the same manner as his two previous fictional novels, "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and "A Man in Full" - a hero (heroine in this case) who has achieved great success but through a combination of his own shortcomings, the "assistance" of disreputable people and "events", finds himself facing absolute and total personal failure. Then, when all appears lost, our hero finds the inner strength, the integrity and the set of fortuitous cicumstances that allows him to rise from the ashes and meet life on his own terms.

That said, I think the critics, whoever they are, are wrong. If Bonfire is his opus work (fictional), then Charlotte is my favorite. Both her fall from grace and the depth of her dispair provide wonderful insight into the human condition. Soaring high on the fumes of her success - academic achievement, the attention of BMOC - to suddenly finding her world unraveling is highly recognizable to anyone with any sense of self. The moment she recognizes her "mistake" - when her 'bubble was burst' so to speak - and the resulting self-flagulation is literary goodness of some magnitude. Tom Wolfe at his best.

I greatly enjoyed the read.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted August 22, 2006

Poignant but exaggerated

Tom Wolfe successfully captures the nature of human behavior in his novel. This novel isn't for the squeamish because he is frank when he writes about Charlotte and her innocence when she encounters the wild life of college. In some instances, she reminded me of myself just in her daily experiences, and even made me turn in discomfort sometimes because her thoughts were so familiar. I believe that many of the themes in the novel are universal, and that everyone can relate to her, whether they are rich, poor, young, or old. One thing I didn't like, however, was that Tom Wolfe exaggerates many of the stereotypes of college life. I am only an incoming freshman college student, so I don't really know how much of the college life in the novel is true or not, but I believe that Wolfe stretches a few points. For instance, he portrays the basketball players as 'dumb jocks' and the sorority girls as the superficial elite. Real life athletes and sorority girls and all students in general may possess some of these characteristics, but the characters in the novel didn't portray them realistically. Overall, I enjoyed the novel. I can take some of the lessons I've learned from the book about friendships and convictions and apply them, hopefully, when I go to college.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted January 31, 2012

classic Tom Wolfe

I liked this book a lot, with all the characters complexities. It is not as compelling as A Man In Full, but I couldn't put it down.
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Anonymous

Posted October 4, 2010

Superb - do yourself a favor and read!!!!

I only wish I had read this before my college experience!! Could not put it down!!
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Anonymous

Posted July 24, 2010

Charlotte Simmons for nook?

I've been wanting to read this book for a while. Why isn't it available as an ebook for the nook?
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RCU

Posted February 20, 2010

A Parent's Must Read

Any parent who will be sending their chlld off to college should read this book first. You will be glad that Tom Wolfe did this research for you. Junior College never looked so good. Even better options might be the military, a trade school or the convent.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted June 2, 2009

A somewhat good read.

The story starts off a little slow and ultimately picks up. You can predict what will happen. Parts of the story were captivating and realistic but there were also parts where I felt I was actually sitting in on a college class and wanted it all to just end. It was recommended to me, but I don't think I would recommend it to someone without reservations.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted June 24, 2008

go,go, jojo!

This book was interesting in certain parts of the novel. It's a little lengthy for me, but still worth to read. Jojo Johannsen is my favorite character in the book because of his predetermination to stay on the basketball team. I didn't like Beverly in the book because she constantly lowered her self worth with the popular lacrosse players and was jealous of Charlotte's innocence.
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Anonymous

Posted August 6, 2008

The Dupont WOMAN

Wolfe opens his nearly 700pg novel with a description of the Dupont man, setting a precedent for the novel. Charlotte is the first year college student that everyone felt like, but was afraid to show. I read this book in the summer before my senior year and barely noticed its length. Every parent of a college student (and every college student) should read this and understand.
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Anonymous

Posted May 28, 2007

A reviewer

This was an absorbing read. Despite its length and my rather slow-paced reading ability, I was moved to finish it in a weekend. For people who like books with memorable characters, this one is great. The unexpected intersections of the main characters' lives was realistically and entertainingly described. I loved college, and I loved when it was over. This book reminded why both are true!
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Anonymous

Posted February 12, 2007

on par with the college experience

Wolfe does an admirable job writing in respects to the millennial college student experience. As a recent female college graduate ('05) I could identify with many of the issues Charlotte struggled with. College literature to not miss: Prep and Pledged.
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Anonymous

Posted December 31, 2006

good but...

The book was good but it was a bit too lengthy. For example, some of the parts of Charlotte's depression could have been cut a bit shorter. I also didn't particularly care for the ending. But as a college student I would say that Wolfe has made an accurate account of college life today.
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Anonymous

Posted December 28, 2006

She is Charlotte Simmons

I honestly have not read any other novels by Tom Wolfe, but this novel has got me interested in his other novels. I Am Charlotte Simmons is absolutely outstanding. The beginning of the novel was not that exciting, but Wolfe makes up for it. Wolfe creates an easy dialogue to follow, although there are some bumpy spots with Darwinism and character backgrounds. The diverse characters bring an odd (but fun) aura throughout the book which creates the book more easy to read.
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Anonymous

Posted September 21, 2006

My mother-in-law hated it so I knew I'd love it1

Wolfe scores big with this very funny, very believable account of a mountain star student gone bad. The only thing this plot lacked was a mafia hit on one of the big wigs from the bad boy fraternity. Everything else is in there! Lots of laughs. Lots of fun!
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Anonymous

Posted August 8, 2006

Could Dupont Be Duke?

Reading this book reminded me of days long ago in the late 60s when I was student at the University of NC Chapel Hill. Raucous frat boys, graduate student 'teachers', almighty basketball. Unfortunately, Tom Wolfe writes an absolutely accurate account of campus life then and now. Dupont University seems to bear a close resemblance to Duke University!
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Anonymous

Posted July 25, 2006

wide of the mark

The question how many colleges have beer busts and dumb jocks is of minor importance in considering this book. The problem is that Tom Wolfe has always prided himself on putting his finger on the pulse of our society, and he has missed it here. Beer parties and jocks have been around for ages and have done little harm to students or to society. In fact, some of those jocks become movie stars (e.g. John Wayne) or politicians (e.g. Gerald Ford). The fact is that colleges and universities in this country are in serious trouble, and it isn¿t because of parties or jocks. It is because professors in many departments (specifically Humanities, Studies, Art, and Education) have a political agenda, and some of that agenda has harmful social and political consequences and some of it even has detrimental effects on the cognitive capabilities of students. This is what this novel should have been about. To touch on this problem obliquely by couching it in one character (and an Asian character at that!) is a howler. (For a novel that does deal with this issue head-on, read The Rape of Alma Mater. Although that novel is primarily from the point of view of various faculty members, there are three students who play important roles.) As to the writing, having Charlotte change may be realistic (depending on what kind of character you want Charlotte to be), but that is irrelevant. This is not a nonfiction description book. This is a novel. Charlotte is our conductor, our partner, our point of view, as we travel through the story. To have her become a different person (a person we no longer want to have as a friend) leaves us without a place to stand. We are abandoned, stranded. We either stop reading or scan. The book is really an ensemble piece. Only a fourth focuses on Charlotte, the rest on the other characters. Problem is that the other characters are not that interesting and certainly not appealing. Tom Wolfe is at his best in the chapters dealing with the student newspaper. The writing there is genuine and involving, without the detached distance of the other chapters. Taking into account the prologue and the sections on neuroscience along with the particulars of this rather peculiar story, it seems clear that the author is trying to prove that any woman will have sex with a hyper testosterone male if the right chain of circumstances pushes the appropriate brain buttons. This explains the microscopic detail the book goes into in devoting literally hundreds of pages to the seduction of Charlotte (which cannot be justified on any literary grounds). However, this is simply the S-R paradigm on a physiological level, and in spite of decades of experiments, the S-R efforts did not succeed too well on higher-order feedback systems (such as humans) except in rare cases. The author programs his model with extreme care, but in several places it strains credibility. True, some ¿nice¿ and pretty girls do hop into bed with gorillas, but many more do not. Typically, even girls who feel lonely and feel that sexual reassurance is the answer, can easily find more appropriate companions. Setting up a false disjunction between Adam and Hoyt won¿t do. Let¿s hope this book was intended as a morality play. Otherwise, the depressing and repulsive story and the incredibly slow pace with which it is told would be too much.
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Anonymous

Posted June 21, 2006

good read but too long

An extremely real world and witty novel. Some of Wolfe's characters, events, and themes are dead on to teenage/college life. My only criticism would be that the novel by and large was far too long, and Charlotte's endless depression was waayy too melodramatic and long. Otherwise, a really good book. It's a good, but lonnnnng fun read.
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Anonymous

Posted March 31, 2006

Fairly Accurate Depiction of College Life

I highly recommend this book, especially for those who are currently attending college or those who attended college. I found Charlotte to be a character that many readers could identify with, although I thought Charlotte's depression was a little too overdramatic, especially for a character as level-headed as Charlotte. This book is descriptive of college life in general, not just small, Ivy League universities, and those who are in college currently will laugh at the accuracy of college life.
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Anonymous

Posted February 25, 2006

Tom Wolfe does it again

The book gets better as it continues. It is one of the best books I have ever read. One reason I liked the book is that all the main characters face serious obstacles, with all but Hoyt struggling to overcome them. Charlotte is not the hero. At the end, she has not found herself, consistent with her being a first year student. I would like to propose that Jojo is the hero. He is the one who becomes a better person as the book proceeds, consistent with his being a senior. Jojo's progress broadens the emotional impact of the book. The goodness of Charlotte and her parents also works to counterbalance the book's cynical impact.
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Anonymous

Posted February 23, 2006

Brilliant

This novel is not only brilliantly written, but is SO accurate a depiction of college life at a top university, that it is almost scary and unbelievable that it was written by an older man. Perhaps some older folks or even younger people who did not attend a top university like 'dupont' cannot relate or cannot possibly believe any of it- but, as someone who did attend a university like 'dupont', i can attest to the fact that Wolfe is, for lack of a better phrase, 'right on.' this is brilliant, and Tom Wolfe has proven himself yet again!
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A greart read

Poignant but exaggerated

classic Tom Wolfe

Superb - do yourself a favor and read!!!!

Charlotte Simmons for nook?

A Parent's Must Read

A somewhat good read.

go,go, jojo!

The Dupont WOMAN

A reviewer

on par with the college experience

good but...

She is Charlotte Simmons

My mother-in-law hated it so I knew I'd love it1

Could Dupont Be Duke?

wide of the mark

good read but too long

Fairly Accurate Depiction of College Life

Tom Wolfe does it again

Brilliant