College — as Tom Wolfe reports it in “I Am Charlotte Simmons” — is one long party, awash with sex and booze, punctuated by occasional grudging appearances in the classroom.
His Charlotte Simmons is a brilliant but astonishingly naive student from rural North Carolina who finds herself saddled with a rich-witch of a roommate and facing the strange world of the fictional Dupont University utterly alone and defenseless.
Over the course of 676 pages, Charlotte loses herself in a quest for social acceptance that ends in drunkenness, assault and depression. It’s not a pretty picture, and, unlike Wolfe’s other novels, there is little humor to counterbalance the gloom.
Given its author’s reputation as a social chronicler, “Charlotte Simmons” has been greeted as more than a work of fiction — indeed, as almost a report on the state of American colleges.
And, although the novel has started to slip down the best-seller lists, it’s gotten some new buzz following a recent report in The New York Times that it’s a favorite of President George W. Bush. The Times wondered if the book represented a trip down memory lane for the once hard-partying fraternity president at Yale.
But the Wall Street Journal responded that “Charlotte Simmons” isn’t such surprising reading “for this supposed Puritan of a President.” Bush probably saw the book as a morality play and “a call for a revival of Victorian modesty and serious-ness of purpose,” the Journal opined.
Wolfe has spoken at length about the research he conducted at Stanford University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Michigan and the University of Florida, as well as shorter visits to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
But many see a lot of Duke University, where Wolfe’s daughter was a student, in Charlotte’s Dupont.* Wolfe laughs at the idea.
Yet, the questions remain: How accurate is his portrait of college life? And how is it playing in the academic trenches?
To find out, Tempo talked with students, professors, administrators, alumni, parents and bookstore managers, particularly at Duke and the universities where Wolfe did his research. Here’s what they told us:
Liz Reaves is a senior political science major at Duke. Recently, she and members of her all-women book club, affiliated with the Duke Women’s Mentoring Network, read and discussed Wolfe’s novel:
“People were really mad and angry at the way it represented college life. We talked about how there were very few redeeming qualities of any of his female characters, and how parents were reading the book, and grandparents. It was hard for us to have them thinking this was college.
“[Duke] has a work-hard, play-hard culture. I think he depicted the play-hard part well. But he didn’t represent the work-hard part, and he didn’t depict the in betweens.
“The first party she goes to — everyone’s been to one of those parties. But the parties are not what defines someone’s college experience.
“It made us think about some things, which was good — but it was so not true. I asked what was true in the book, and we spent about two minutes on that, and then it went back to why it was so wrong.
“People were so angry at the way Charlotte handled things. We talked about how you have to adjust to your friends and be flexible and not judge people. She was so self-righteous.”
William McKeen is the chairman of the journalism department at the University of Florida and author of “Tom Wolfe,” a 1995 study of the writer’s life and work. In March 2000, he served as Wolfe’s guide and host during a visit to the campus:
“I’m teaching a literary journalism class this semester, and about a third of the [30] students just finished the book or are in the middle of it. So we talked about it, and everybody was in agreement that he’s right on the money. They were impressed that a 70-year-old man could report on the life of the young folks.
“A lot of other students have come up to me. They say, `That’s kind of what my life is like.’ He did an excellent job of reporting.
“[The novel] is sort of slipping off the best-seller lists. But this book is surprisingly popular with college students. I see them carrying it around. I see them talking about it, and talking about it in class.”
Zac Peskowitz, a senior at the University of Michigan, majoring in economics and political science, reviewed Wolfe’s novel for the campus newspaper in December:
“I don’t think that many college students have read the book. It’s a book they’ve heard of and are aware of. Quite a few people have read the excerpts.
“A lot of people feel the idea of it is ridiculous — Wolfe going undercover to get the skinny on college life, a man in his 70s. People recognize there is a lot of truth to the lurid details of what goes on at college, but the emphasis is skewed. The vast bulk of a college student’s time is not spent going to frat parties.
“One respect in which the book was pretty unbelievable was the level of contact between the athletes and the rest of the students. [In real life,] they’re unbelievably isolated. They have special meals, special study centers. They take special classes. Their level of isolation is stunning.”
Steve McClain, the assistant athletic director at the University of Florida, says Wolfe’s depiction of college athletes who make fun of any teammate who studies hard doesn’t ring true, at least at his school:
“Matt Bonner, one of our star players [2000-03], was voted to an Academic All-American [twice] in all of college basketball. Matt is now playing for the Toronto Raptors.
“Matt didn’t hide it. We opened a new basketball facility, and there was a lot of national media, and I was giving a tour. And, as I walked to the players study area, one of the media say, `You mean, players lounge.’ I opened the door, and Matt Bonner was in there studying.
“Like anything else, it’s easy to generalize. You can take any slice of American society and say there’s good and bad.”
James D. Sink, a cardiac surgeon in Chapel Hill, N.C., was a member of the Phi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University of North Carolina in his undergraduate days. He also has degrees from Duke and Wake Forest. His four children are attending or have graduated from Duke, UNC and Loyola University New Orleans:
“I went through a lot of emotions reading the book. I was disappointed in the way college life was portrayed. It made all the Greek people look shallow and self-centered. I was a little shocked, in reading the book, that many of the women seemed as sexually aggressive as the men.
“My son has been through the fraternity system, and I was in the fraternity system, and the way [Wolfe] depicts how they sit around watching TV, trying to look like you’re not studying anytime — I think that’s true. As far as the sexual permissiveness, I’m afraid to ask.
“I was sad for Charlotte. She was looking for the life of the mind, and, by the end of the book, it kind of slipped away. Charlotte really had no one to talk to. “She really wasn’t prepared for college life. She wanted to be accepted so badly. Her roommate belittled her. Charlotte seemed not to be able to find any girl who was a good fit for her. She was really all alone.”
John Burness, the senior vice president for public affairs and government relations at Duke, says he’s heard very little comment about the book from the university’s administrators, students and parents:
“[Wolfe] sent a letter to the president of the university, saying it’s not Duke.”
Teresa Rogstad of North Granby, Conn., is a Duke graduate and the mother of a present-day Duke student:
“I haven’t read the book. I’m sure all that [drinking and sex] goes on anywhere. In a good-size school, people find their own group and can be sort of insulated from what goes on. That’s how it is with my son.
“We took the Chronicle [the campus newspaper] on Mondays last year. And there was a young woman writing for the paper telling people about her sex life. I found it shocking. I know people did not talk like that when I was at Duke in the ’70s. It wasn’t graphic detail about her sex life, but the article we saw was her making the point that women have as much right to be playgirls as the guys. It was pretty brazen.”
David H. Kalsbeek oversees marketing and enrollment development at DePaul University, where his daughter is a student:
“I read it with pretty deep concern about the environment for young women on college campuses today.
“But, as I continued reading it, I felt it was not that much different from when I and my wife were in college. The obsession with sex, beer and four-letter words is not all that novel as an issue.
“He paints a pretty extreme picture. That, no doubt, represents college life on some campuses.
“I was struck with the intellectual vacuum and purposelessness to life at Dupont University — the value [the students] find in being there is only its exclusivity. Dupont doesn’t stand for anything.
“I told my own staff, `I have a hard time recommending that you read it. It’s kind of a crappy book. But I’d recommend you read it because it is a portrait of college life in some settings in some institutions.'”
Connie Eble, an English professor at the University of North Carolina, is an expert on college slang whom Wolfe consulted in researching his novel:
“I know my students are really interested in those things [sex and drinking], but how could they get their papers done and their homework done if they were living the way the young people in that book were living?
“My students have not said anything about it. It is not a book for the students. Tom Wolfe means nothing to them. He’s an author of my generation. When I was in my 20s, his books were big. They were hot items. To most of these kids, he’s not a celebrity.
“I thought the book was too long. I had the feeling he wanted us to get sated with this and get disgusted with this — `For God’s sake, is this what the brightest and best are doing?'”
Diane Smith is the operations manager at the Gothic Bookshop, one of the bookstores on the Duke campus:
“For us, the book is doing quite well. We’ve sold about 30 copies, which is great for hardcover fiction.
“At checkout, [buyers] usually get that little smile on their face and say, `You know, this is all about Duke.’ One old student told me, `It’s all about the students at Duke you didn’t like.’
“Myself, I don’t have much interest in reading it although I like Tom Wolfe. I’m not that interested in college life. I’m just at an age when it’s not a concern to me. Maybe because I have a 9-year-old daughter, I don’t want to know.”
Scott McWilliams is the manager of 57th Street Books, serving the University of Chicago and the Hyde Park neighborhood:
“It’s selling better now than the initial sales indicated. We were worried at first; the reviews were mixed. We had expected it would blow out of the store. It was Tom Wolfe, and it’s been a while.
“We’ve sold 19 copies. Selling 19 copies of a hardcover novel is perfectly fine for our little corner of the world, but not if it’s one of the superstars.”
Charles Lovelace is the executive director of the Morehead Foundation at the University of North Carolina, one of the most prestigious scholarship programs in the U.S. He is also the father of a 15-year-old daughter:
“I found the book to be exaggerated and vulgar, but it did a remarkable job in portraying the confusion over identity that so many college students have experienced, especially in the early years.
“All the problems presented in the book — the undergraduate use of alcohol, date rape, depression — are problems that exist on every college campus. The extreme nature in how they’re presented may be misleading. That’s not every student’s experience, but these are problems that exist in a real way.
“I suppose, if we reflect on our own college experience and think of the most outrageous things that happened in our four undergraduate years, maybe not to us but to people around us, or were rumored to have happened, we could write a very similar book.”
Michael Mahdi, a prelaw senior, is the president of Duke University’s branch of the National Pan-Hellenic Council, a group of nine historically black fraternities and sororities. Unlike most of the characters in Wolfe’s book, Mahdi, who has only read excerpts of the novel, has a job, doing computer work at the campus hospital to put himself through school:
“The whole college alcohol thing gets kind of overplayed. I’ve read that story too many times. My problem is that it’s so negative — that it’s impossible for any Greek organization to be about anything other than drinking.
“He’s writing something that we’re living — and it’s skewed. All of my friends have jobs. I’m a Greek guy, paying for my schooling, who doesn’t drink, and I don’t have a place in the book. And spirituality — we say a prayer to start every meeting.”
Jan Kylstra, a Chapel Hill physician, has degrees from Dartmouth College and Duke, and his daughter Carolyn is now a freshman at Dartmouth:
“I thought, for a Tom Wolfe book, it was one of his weaker ones. His characters tend to be caricatures, and this was even more so. The bottom line, though, is it was a fun book.
“My daughter thinks it’s an extreme exaggeration from a small percentage. She thinks he took some odd ducks and generalized. He portrays [college students] as extremely superficial and appearance-minded. It was only sex and social status that seemed to be the important issues.
“I saw the same things when I was in college. But that’s only one dimension of the whole story. There were serious people. They took life seriously. They took romance seriously.
“When I was in college, I was one of those premed nerd types. There were a lot of us. We did a lot of studying. We didn’t party that much.”
* According to Duke’s campus newspaper, The Chronicle, and one of the local newspapers, the Durham Herald-Sun, here are some similarities that Duke and Dupont share: a highly successful basketball program, an undergraduate enrollment of about 6,000, an ornate reading room in the library, a basketball coach’s office taking up an entire floor in one of the major campus buildings, greatly enlarged dorm rooms for athletes, separate freshman dorms, a prestigious academic reputation, a location next to an impoverished neighborhood, a social life dominated by fraternities and sororities and a star white basketball player whose nickname begins with “J” (JoJo Johanssen at Dupont, J.J. Redick at Duke).
