Charlotte Simmons got a perfect score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. She was her high school valedictorian. She received a full scholarship to Dupont University, one of the top schools in the nation.
Now she is facing the biggest test of all — acceptance among her peers. What will this innocent from Podunk do to get it? And what will it ultimately do to her?
Tom Wolfe has attempted an age-old theme in his latest novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” and he dangled a surefire setting: a sex-crazed college campus.
Even at the mammoth size of 676 pages, readers have gobbled it up.
Dupont — a fictional cousin of Duke, perhaps — is a world where nobody except Charlotte and a few bookies who have dubbed themselves “millennial mutants” seems to study.
For everyone else, apparently, college is a time of getting so drunk they can do little more than vomit, crawl on all fours and “hook up.”
Audio Renaissance recorded two versions, a 10-hour abridgment ($29.95 on cassette; $34.95 on CD) and the 31-hour entirety ($59.95 on cassette or CD) both narrated by Dylan Baker.
Jojo Johanssen is the stupid jock who limps through the curriculum with courses nicknamed Rocks for Jocks (geology), Stocks for Jocks (economy) and “Frere Jocko (French).
Hoyt Thorpe is the privileged, Cassanova-like frat boy, a senior who has more conquests than he can count, or even remember. Seven minutes from meeting to bedding is his goal.
Beverly Amory of Groton (as in the boarding school, not the town), is Charlotte’s anorexic roommate. She has a penchant for lacrosse players, leaving Charlotte “sexiled” to the dorm lounge.
Wolfe regales us with plenty. Actually, it’s a bit much. Wolfe is so immersed in campus life of the early 21st Century that he doesn’t know what to leave out. This did not have to be his doctoral thesis on college. It merely had to be an entertaining story.
I found myself playing the abridger game: If I were cutting this novel, would I leave in the lengthy description of Jojo’s new SUV? Nope. Did I really need the rundown on the banners and bushes decorating Thorpe’s frat formal? Ha.
Once, I switched to the print version just to get a different experience because the audio seemed to be slow going, and it was a pleasure to skim some portions.
But I found myself missing Baker’s dead-on performance. He took Wolfe to whole new levels of Sarc Three, as the students call it. Baker was fun, thrilling and altogether fine.
Nowhere was Baker better than when he portrayed Jojo trying to talk to Charlotte without cursing every other word: “But you gotta help me! If you don’t, I’m fuh — I’m screwed.”
When it was just Wolfe and I, I chafed from time to time. But with Baker interceding, I loved the whole thing.
