I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel

I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel
by Tom Wolfe

I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Tom Wolfe
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-08-30
ISBN: 0312424442
Number of pages: 752
Publisher: Picador
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780312424442
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel

Book Review: I WAS (and am) ADAM GELLIN (the dork)!!! Pt. I
Summary: 5 Stars

I'm only half-way into this book and already I can tell you that Tom Wolfe tells it like it is! He writes with the energy and panache of an ageless (and authentic) wunderkind. People who decry this book as "unrealistic" are just fooling themselves. Wake up! Take a look in the mirror, people! Tom doesn't shy away from showing you all the sad, petty, twisted and overwhelming obsessions of college life (which, of course, is just the real life shrinked down.) In fact, this book is SO realistically written that it's given me post-traumatic stress syndrome. I'm not kidding! In college (and high school) I was basically the Adam Gellin character - the dork, forced to kowtow to the jocks and always shot down by the hotties. Here's a little passage where Tom NAILS the mindframe of one of the a-hole jockstrap gorillas:

"What did Adam the tutor amount to? He amounted to a male low in the masculine pecking order who is angry, deserves to be angry, is dying to show anger, but doesn't dare do so in the face of two alpha males, both of them physically intimidating as well as famous on the Dupont campus. Jojo had enjoyed this form of unspoken domination ever since he was twelve. It was a source of inexpressible satisfaction."

Thank god somebody's got the guts to tell the TRUTH. Frankly, I think Wolfe is unjustly criticized on the basis of his age; people assume a 70-something author can't capture college kids' mental state. WRONG! Time and again I'm just blown away at how well he does it - the slang, the attitudes, the clothes, etc. The guy was clearly channeling!

And one finally gets a true view into the workings of the female mind - the ostensibly "smart and sweet" Charlotte Simmons is just a sucker when it comes to hot guys; she can't see them for what they really are: a-holes. "Charlotte's pulse was rapid... She was excited...the only girl in a room in a fraternity house with a whole bunch of cool boys." Meanwhile, like in real-life, the poor dork in the form of Adam Gellin (ME) is shunned and shunted. Nerds lose. Frat-boys and jocks win. Like in real-life: Bush is President. While a nerd can't get a job or a girl and winds up spending too much time writing up a review for Amazon. Ha!

Some readers complain the characters are stereotypes. Well, okay, Wolfe does skirt the margins of caricature. On the other hand, there really ARE people like this! If anything, his portrayals are HYPER-realistic. It's like he put a college campus under a microscope, and really ZOOMED in, until all the frightening details scream in your face. After all, what would've been the point of a bland, distant, birds-eye view? No, this is the only way it could've been done, had to be done, for the average, jaded reader to stand up and take notice.

Also, Wolfe gives every character depth and dimension, lifting them above the stereotype category. Even the gorilla jock becomes a REAL PERSON. Often he'll break the narrative flow to launch into a long exposition on how a character became what he or she is. You'd think it'd be boring, but it's actually not. You feel their desires, hopes, fears, everything.

AS FOR STYLE - Tom has enough to spare. I've never read a book by him before, namely because I assumed he'd be boring (most books dubbed as "literary" tend to turn me off), but wow was I wrong! This guy breaks every rule in the book and makes it work! He's like some hybrid of Bret Easton Ellis and Hubert Selby jr (and maybe a dash of Chuck Palahniuk?). He uses plenty of repetition (creating a crazed rhythm), will use all CAPS in dialogue (like Selby for emphasis), will phonetically spell out slang and sounds effects like and "oohooooo....oohoooooo...." and ":::::STATIC:::::" and is no stranger to using ellipses and wild streams-of-consciousness. He's clearly having an exhilarating good time with the English language. This is the book that Bret's "Rules of Attraction" wanted (or should've) been. While Bret is a great stylist as well, his book bogs down under its too-episodic going-nowhere structure and characters that all sound the same. Not here. Wolfe always maintains a "through-line" - things connect, there's a sense the characters are headed for a showdown (psychic or physical). Or to put it another way: THE PROPULSIVE ENERGY OF THIS BOOK COULD POWER ALL THE LIGHTS AND SUBWAYS OF MANHATTAN FOR A YEAR.

The chapter entitled, "The `H' Word" alone is worth the price of the book! It's a laugh out-loud expose' of the weight-rooms and body-conscious culture of America. The men with their "curious, apelike straddle gait." The females on cardio-machines with their rear, sweat-stained "declivities." And poor "unsexed" Adam running around, hoping to bulk up. Read it! Nobody has made you seen it more vividly.

Okay, I could on and on, but I need to stop somewhere. Suffice to say - I would give this book 20 stars if I could! It's one of those rare books that hits a nerve in you, expresses everything inside of you. It's real. It's the truth.

PS - I will post a Pt. II follow-up when I done. Stay tuned! ;)

Summary of I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel

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.

Amazon.com Exclusive Content


Product Description: Dupont University--the Olympian halls of learning 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 uppercrust coeds of Dupont, sex, Cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.

As Charlotte encounters 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 gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence, but little does she realize that she will act as a catalyst in all of their lives. With his signature eye for detail, Tom Wolfe draws on extensive observation of campuses across the country to immortalize college life in the '00s. I Am Charlotte Simmons is the much-anticipated triumph of America's master chronicler.

Tom Wolfe Talks About I Am Charlotte Simmons
In I Am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe masterfully chronicles college sports, fraternities, keggers, coeds, and sex--all through the eyes of the titular Simmons, a bright and beautiful freshman at the fictional Dupont University. Listen to an Amazon.com exclusive audio clip of Wolfe talking about his new novel.

  • Listen to Tom Wolfe Talk About I Am Charlotte Simmons



    Tom Wolfe Timeline

    1931: Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, Jr. born in Richmond, VA, on March 2. Wolfe later attends Washington and Lee University (BA, English, 1951), and Yale University (Ph.D., American Studies, 1957).

    1956: Wolfe begins working as a reporter in Springfield, MA, Washington, D.C., then finally New York City, writing feature articles for major newspapers, as well as New York and Esquire magazines. Not satisfied with the conventions of newspaper reporting at the time, Wolfe experiments with using the techniques of fiction writing in his news articles. Wolfe's newspaper career spans a decade.

    1963: After being sent by Esquire to research a story about the custom car world in Southern California, Wolfe returns to New York with ideas, but no article. Upon telling his editor he cannot write it, the editor suggests he send his notes and someone else will. Wolfe stays up all night, types 49 pages, and turns it in the next morning. Later that day, the editor calls to tell Wolfe they are cutting the salutation off the top of the memorandum, printing the rest as-is. Thus, New Journalism was arguably born, whereby writing and storytelling techniques previously utilized only in fiction were radically applied to nonfiction. Straight reporting pieces now were free to include: the author's perceptions and experience, shifting perspectives, the use of jargon and slang, the reconstruction of events and conversations.

    1965: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux publish Wolfe's first collection of nonfiction stories displaying his newfound reporting techniques: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. The book cements Wolfe's place as a prominent stylist of the New Journalism movement.

    1968: The Pump House Gang and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (No. 91 on National Review's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century) publish on the same day, and together provide an up-close portrait and exploration of the hippie culture of the 1960s (by following the novelist Ken Kesey and his entourage of LSD enthusiasts), and the cultural change occurring at a seminal point in U.S. social history.

    1970: Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is published. This collection underscores racial divide in America, including an am using story about the socialites of New York City seeking out black liberation groups as guests, focusing on the conductor Leonard Bernstein's party with the Black Panthers in attendance at his Park Avenue duplex. (No. 35 on National Review's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century .)

    1976: Wolfe labels the 1970s "The Me Decade" in his collection of essays, Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine. Wolfe illustrates the bookthroughout.

    1979: The Right Stuff is published. Depicting the status, structure, exploits, and ethics of daredevil pilots at the forefront of rocket and aircraft technology, as well as the beginnings of the space program and the pioneering NASA astronauts who were the first Americans to land on the moon, the book receives the National Book Award in 1980. An Academy Award-winning film is made from the book in 1983.

    1987: With publication of his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities--serialized in Rolling Stone magazine--Wolfe pens one of the bestselling and definitive novels of the 1980s, continuing his social criticism and ability to capture the lives and preoccupations of Americans, one generation at a time. Wolfe receives a record $5 million for movie rights to the novel and, despite the success of the book, the film fails at the box office.

    1998: A Man in Full, Wolfe's second novel, is published to mixed criticism, yet garners favor as a 1998 National Book Award Finalist. Here, Wolfe aims his sights on the Atlanta, GA, elite, trophy wives, and real estate developers, continuing to comment on racial issues and the chasm in socioeconomic status in America.

    2000: Hooking Up, a collection of essays, reviews, profiles, and the novella, Ambush at Fort Bragg, is published.

    2004: On November 9, Wolfe's third novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, set at the fictional Dupont University, is published.

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