December 4, 2004
Tom Wolfe and I Am Charlotte Simmons
I Am Charlotte SimmonsIt may be an exaggeration, but not much of one, to say that I live for books by Tom Wolfe.
After a wait of six years since 
A Man in Full, I was the first person to check out Charlotte Simmons at the Baltimore County Library I usually patronize (Rosedale). One gets used to waiting for works by the master (11 years between 
Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full, eight years between 
The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities).
I Am Charlotte Simmons depicts in full glory the waste of time a four-year university is for the jocks, the frat boys and sorority sisters and anyone deeply into the party and drinking and hook-up scene (I deal with the phenomenon of hooking up in my forthcoming book, Romance on the Road).
Wolfe describes the level of cynicism that permits These Young People Today to have not one, but three levels of Sarcasm: Sarc 1, Sarc 2 and Sarc 3.
Charlotte Simmons had been out less than one month, and already it has stirred a spirited debate over the behavior on college campuses. To whit, on National Review Online's The Corner, John Derbyshire writes:
College LifeReader responses to my Charlotte Simmons review are all over the lot, from "Wolfe doesn't tell the half of it" to "nothing like that going on at MY college."
Seems to me there is wide variation between colleges, even between high-Ivies.
But why go to college at all, to credential-up for some job that will be outsourced to Bangladesh the year after you graduate?"Mr. Derbyshire---Things are as bad as Wolfe portrays them. Following an excellent education in a private Jesuit high school in [major city] I attended and graduated from [major university]. Neither of my children will ever go near such a place. My wife (a very bright and completely decent Englishwoman) did not attend university. My neighbors (in a nice suburb of [major city]) who have the largest houses are a plumber and a builder who have managed to start and run successful enterprises without the benefit of a college education.
"College is an expensive hiatus during which young men and women experience depravity, drunkenness and depression out of sight of their parents -- who benefit from not seeing the suicides, abortions, rapes and baseness."
One can speculate how far this will lead, but I think it safe to speculate that a fair number of parents will begin to look more carefully at paying $20,000 a year for debauchery and brain-washing, both inside and outside the classroom. One even wonders if Tom Wolfe on his own will create a devaluation of the entire idea of a college education, given the sideshow campus life has apparently become. Thomas Sowell calls for greater care in evaluating who goes to college and where:
Some young people are not yet ready for coed living arrangements and the pressures and dangers that can lead to. Some are at risk on a campus with widespread drug usage. Some students can get very lonely when they just don't fit in.Sometimes there is no one to turn to and sometimes the adults they turn to on campus have nothing but psychobabble to offer.
Late adolescence and early adulthood are among the most dangerous times in people's lives, when one foolish decision can destroy everything for which parents and children have invested time and efforts and hopes for years.
In my Web surfing this morning, seeking to find out if Tom Wolfe would do a book signing in Baltimore (drat, the answer is no, and his visits to Washington have come and gone), I came across the author's Web site. Guess what -- the best 100-word essay entered in a contest thereon gets to meet the great one!
Guess I will be polishing my entry between now and the closing date. I have loved everything since 1965's
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and hope to think of something decent to enter in the contest.
- posted by jbelliveau at 1:03 PM in Books, Music, DVDs
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