The Orbis

A few weeks ago, however, I keyed in, "Mom, I gotta go to class, later, respect," to which she responded, "Yair, one other thing before you go.  In terms of college lingo, have you heard of the term sexiled?"  "Yes," I typed. "When kids have roomies, and one wants to bring a girl to the room, the other gets sexiled and has to go sleep downstairs on the couch."  "Right," she said.  My mom is with it (sort of.)  But Tom Wolfe definitely trumps her with his 676 page novel on college life, I Am Charlotte Simmons.

Wolfe, the 74-year-old, best-selling author, spent months at schools such as the University of Michigan, Stanford and UNC-Chapel Hill in order to plunge headfirst into today's college culture.  The result: Dupont University, a fictitious institution of Ivy-like prestige located in Pennsylvania that somehow, in some way, really does showcase the hilarious (and dark) sides of elite university life.  I was skeptical of Wolfe's legitimacy at first, remembering that he went to Washington & Lee in the 1940s and Yale in the 1950s.  How could he truly express my generation's collegiate experience with authenticity?  Should the book not have been someone more "in touch" to write something like this?  I was quickly proven wrong. 

Through the eyes of the brilliant but sheltered freshman Charlotte Simmons, a voracious reader from a small North Carolina town attending Dupont on a full scholarship, Wolfe renders modern university life with the pinpoint accuracy of a Dawid Przybyszewski three-pointer.  He not only delivers the nuances, the cadences and the heartbeat of a college campus in 2004, but he does so through the mind and voice of a young female undergraduate.  Like any good shooter, Wolfe does occasionally throw up a few bricks, but with 676 pages of narrative, his missteps seem almost parenthetical to the enormity of this quality work.

At the Saint Ray fraternity house, the boys gather around in their khakis and flip-flops, play drinking games such as Quarters and talk about kegs, rap music and investment banking.  "Watching ESPN SportsCenter on a forty-inch flat-screen television set, drinking beer, needling each other, making wisecracks and occasionally directing sentiments of awe or admiration toward the screen," these are Dupont's crème da le crème, the status-seeking Saint Rays led by Hoyt Thorpe.  Thorpe crushes ass as the uber-confident ideal "hot ticket" on Thursday nights, with his pickup line, "Mind if I asked you something?  I bet you get really tired of people telling you you look like Britney Spears."  Awkward, perhaps, but it seems to work.  Nevertheless, Thorpe has a few secrets of his own...

Throughout the novel, Wolfe brilliantly traverses the precarious intellectual tightrope that is status among students at America's most prestigious universities.  Narcissism runs rampant.  Egotism, self-absorption and vanity are the qualities of the day.  But does Wolfe succeed in telling us something that we don't know.  Wolfe reveals the eating disorders.  The retching and the vomiting.  But we know about that.  Wolfe reveals the proudly drunk male holding a Solo cup, yelling, "I want some ass! I need some ass! Anybody know where's some ass?"  But we know about him, too.  (He may even be one of my roommates.)  Wolfe reveals with striking accuracy the stereotypical nerds and the jocks, the virgins and the sluts, the racism, the sexism and the classism, and the beer and the pot.  We know this already.  He does all this through the guise of Charlotte who exposes to the reader what she herself is experiencing as she experiences it and as she reflects upon it.

Which brings me back to my mom.  She is with it (sort of).  She gets "sexiled" and "hooking up," but does she get it like Wolfe does?  I don't think so.  In an odd way, I think this book is a greater literary achievement for Wolfe than it would appear to the typical Vanderbilt student.  (And not just because he wrote it.)  We are living his narrative.  We are the 18-24 year olds who chronicle with searing accuracy.  Many of us will see ourselves in Charlotte and see our underworld in her world, enclosed by the boundaries of West End Avenue and 21st, replete with luscious lawns and the luscious lips of our dorm-mates and fellow class-goers. We think this stuff is normal.  Wolfe's observations show us that our lives are anything but.  In our four years at Vanderbilt we are taking on an experience that our parents are often unaware of. 

Anyone who doesn't read Plato's The Republic in one day and write the paper in one night, who doesn't have a crush on at least one of their Facebook friends, who doesn't watch MJ in The Real World or play Beirut on occasion or go to the Rec and immerse herself in the meat-market that is appearance and superficiality may glean something of intellectual worth from this book.  But for the rest of us, those US News & World Report rankings obsessed college-aged kids who do know, at least a little, about what it's like to be a college student, Wolfe's work is not as profound.  It doesn't have to be.  It's witty, funny and it makes you stop for a moment and realize the life you are living.  It's a very entertaining read despite its length.

Now if you're worried that your parents will get a hold of I am Charlotte Simmons and immediately have access to your inner-diary, your inner-blog, your inner-Vanderbilt experience and lose all the trust and faith they had in you, your part-time internship and your 3.5 GPA, don't worry.  They'll never believe this stuff is true.  It's like talking about the, "world wide web," in the 1980s or "walking on the moon," in the 1940s—they just won't believe it.  We're in the clear.  As for my mom, who's already scratched the surface with "sexiled" and "hooking up," that may not be the case.  Maybe she's onto something.  This holiday season, as we wander through the aisles at Borders in Annapolis, MD, I'll make sure she steers clear of I am Charlotte Simmons.  

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