Tom Wolfe's Charlotte Simmons

[thedarkages]

I did not like this book at all. Tom Wolfe tries to cover every angle and take every side in his so-called "exposé" of collegiate doings, and he is markedly unsuccessful in doing so. Ms. Simmons is as transparent a device for Wolfe's eye as the narrator of the Canterbury Tales is for Chaucer's, and Wolfe does not come off well by comparison. As I recall, when the book was published, people were shocked by all the sex and drinking. I don't know why, though the author overexerts himself in working himself up to the required heights of excess. Strangely enough, I went through an institution rather like Dupont (though I think Dupont can only be a stand-in for Duke), and managed to keep myself more or less away from all that. I wouldn't put it down to great virtue as much as to the lack of temptation placed in my way. I had some vague and overly sanitary idea of what I was missing, but light did not dawn until the end of my senior year, when my dorm had a "roast." I was, despite myself, surprised that such accomplished and successful people as my classmates had carried on with such avidity.

I will never tire of repeating this, but, at graduation, I received a silver cup "for scholarship and good moral character." I think the academic dignitary who conferred it meant it, poor fellow; he didn't realize that being a social nonentity goes a long way towards promoting both.

Fifteen years later, I'm writing ad copy for bathroom fittings. Who has the last laugh now?