If the University of Wisconsin-Madison were a Tom Wolfe novel, all of us would be getting laid far more than we already are. Some of us, especially frat boys and athletes, would be scoring around the clock. Not simply getting a little “sumptin’ sumptin’,” but full-out scoring. Fasten your seatbelts, lads, college is the land of milk and honeys.
Or, more accurately, we would be scored, for the characters in Wolfe’s latest novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” are little more than caricatures, passive creatures forever reacting to the presence of others. In the fictional Dupont University, there are no strong wills, only the forces of social Darwinism at play. Wolfe has never been very good at delivering characters with flesh and depth, but it is surprising that in this novel about flesh and depth, not one character rises to the challenge of the theme. What Wolfe hands us, instead, are some particularly flat characters interacting in some particularly stereotypical, if not farcical, scenes.
It’s not just that Charlotte Simmons, recently arrived from Sparta, N.C., is unbelievable. It’s that we’re never given enough in the book make her believable. She is portrayed as little more than a poor, virtuous and intelligent (if naive) hick. Too simple-minded and trusting, Charlotte is easy meat for the predatory social atmosphere at Dupont. More time is spent creating that social atmosphere than is spent trying to truly focus on Charlotte, to give us insight. She is, simply, innocence personified.
Very little of the book is dedicated to her, anyhow. Wolfe spends much more time giving us glimpses into the food chain that surrounds the Pennsylvania college. His narrative focuses on three key men: Jojo Johansen, the only starting player on Dupont’s vaunted basketball team; Hoyt Thorpe, a Saint Ray frat boy who sincerely believes that fraternities are the last bastion of male identity in a world increasingly hostile to the masculine; and Adam Gellin, reporter and part-time pizza delivery boy who believes that his mental power will eventually triumph over the strength and charm that clearly dominate the social chain.
The thread that weaves these three unlikely suitors together is more than just their relation to Charlotte. If it were simply three men striving to touch Charlotte, the novel would fall apart after just a couple chapters. Instead, the social chain binds these three much closer. Jojo, unable or unwilling to complete a history assignment, turns to his tutor Adam, who in turn writes the paper for him. When the plagiarism comes to light, it is Adam’s article outlining Hoyt’s involvement in the cover-up of a sex scandal involving the governor of California that convinces a radical left-wing professor to drop the plagiarism charges. It was Hoyt’s deflowering of Charlotte that prompts Adam to push the article through the paper’s reluctant editor.
It’s enough to make even a writer of soap opera cringe, but Wolfe is just getting warmed up. When a lacrosse player and Saint Ray brother face off in the stadium parking lot, over Charlotte no less, Hoyt rushes to his frat brother’s aid, full of thoughts of warriors and glory, only to be spiritually defeated by his physical defeat (and the fact that Charlotte was able to walk away without his help).
Then there are the basketball scenes, where the pecking order between the black players is painfully narrated, with attempts at dialect “yo mama” jokes, the description of lacrosse players coming across the newspaper reporters perched like crows on the stoop of a dormitory, and the picture of boys and girls sitting in dorm halls, waiting to feed on the rumors and gossip of everyone coming down the hall. For an author who once exhorted the idea of heading out into the real world to report real life and find literary truth, “I Am Charlotte Simmons” is a long and painful fall.
If caricature and exaggeration were the only problems with “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” it might be a pleasant read. After all, Wolfe has a reputation as a gifted descriptive writer. Some of the scenes, especially his descriptions of basketball games, are intensely powerful and well written, but they simply cannot hide the inadequate development of the story. It’s not simply the flat characters and unbelievable, often illogical situations that are required to maintain his moralistic plot. It’s that we already know everything he is attempting to say. Yes, Mr. Wolfe, we know that college students drink. Yes, Mr. Wolfe, we know that college students have sex. Yes, Mr. Wolfe, we know that sports often have an inflated presence on campuses. Yes, Mr. Wolfe, we know, we know, we know.
It’s as if Tom Wolfe woke up one day, came down to breakfast and discovered the world changed since he went to college. He seems morbidly curious about the sexual habits of college students. He takes great pains in attempting to convey how much sex permeates college life. He catalogues the wide variety of terms we have to discuss sex and its social repercussions — “sexiled,” “frostitute” and “dormcest” seem to be his favorites (although has anyone ever heard anyone say “dormcest” before?).
Amid the scenes of drunken debauchery, incessant moralizing (yes, Mr. Wolfe, WE KNOW) and pages-long exploration of the interaction between the social rungs, the story is simply lost. We don’t ever understand why Charlotte would give Hoyt the time of day, or why she’d spend any time with Adam. Jojo’s strange and erratic courting of Charlotte makes absolutely no sense. Worst of all, we never come to know Charlotte amid her often contradictory and bizarre decisions. While we watch her hooking up with Hoyt, making out with Adam and chiding Jojo, the reader, her fourth suitor, gets little more than a passing glance.
“The Bonfire of the Vanities” put Tom Wolfe on the literary map, a piece of fiction that is full and vibrant, a work that solidified his place in modern literary discourse. “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” his third full-length novel, seems little more than self-indulgent ego, the literary equivalent of “Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!” It’s not the lack of depth that ultimately undermines the novel. Instead, it is Tom Wolfe’s fundamental misunderstanding of the values and morality he is attempting to condemn. Without that understanding, the novel falls flat, like Charlotte herself.
