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I am currently working on Capitol Hill for Senator Rick Santorum in his leadership office. I manage cultural outreach and special projects for the 55 Senate Republican Members who make up the Senate Republican Conference. I live in northern Virginia with my husband Joel and we attend The Falls Church.
In addition to the rather benign fact that I attended college, there is also the more remarkable fact that I had an eerily similar experience to that of Ms. Simmons when I went to college. With the exception of a few plot twists, I could almost imagine Mr. Wolfe followed me around campus for four years and wrote this book simply to mess with my head. Not kidding! Let’s just say I fought off more than one fit of nausea reading this book. Being a few years outside of college and now having, by God’s grace, the ability to look at those years not only through the objective lens of Wolfe’s narrative, but through the lens of my faith, it was all I could do to not scream through the pages to Charlotte to stop being such a stupid, stupid girl!!
2) What did you think of his vantage point on the university world at large, and of Charlotte's experience of it?
BC I felt Wolfe described a very narrow, but significant, segment of the university population. The young people in his book are white, upper class and un-churched. However, you can't go far at the University of California without meeting first and second generation Americans motivated to work hard and make their families proud. Other students are determined to go to graduate school and will tolerate nothing that distracts them from their goals. Still others become immersed in art, in journalism, in science, in history, and build friendships based on mutual interests. In addition, there are communities of faith whose members consciously reject the amoral choices of their peers.
Nothing could be further from all these experiences than the bed-hopping, hard-drinking perpetual party that Wolfe describes. Wolfe is relentless in his refusal to give Charlotte places of refuge. She meets no one who rises above the seduction culture, only those who participate and those who envy. Charlotte enters college hopelessly innocent. Are people, even rural people, surprised by cell phones any more? She has worked all her life for the approval of adults. She does not own her faith, her knowledge, her goals. She enters university desperate to gain approval from others, all the while repeating her mantra "I am Charlotte Simmons" without wondering what that means. All this works together to make the story compelling, but somewhat flat. Charlotte is more the fly in the spider web than a complex human being making choices.
KH I think this book is frighteningly true of how thing are, or at least how I experienced things to be, on college campuses today. While I was reading the book, I read several reviews by columnists and authors who emphasized how exaggerated they found Wolfe’s portrayal to be. The only thing I kept thinking as I read these reviews was that these reviewers must all have been out of college for some time, because they are in dreamland if they think the story Wolfe tells is too outrageous to believe. It’s unbelievable, for sure, but it is also happening just as he tells it.
As I read through this book I can say with confidence that just about every character and every circumstance was someone or something familiar to me. I would say that just about every situation Wolfe described is one I can either recall distinctly from my own experience or know about firsthand from close friends. Overall, I would say he is definitely on the mark, especially as it concerns elite, expensive universities where the “work hard, play hard” ethic is dominant among students and parents who see school as a “ticket punch” on the way up an already well-assured ladder of success, instead of an institution to grow minds and character.
3) Some critics have panned it, arguing that Wolfe is out-of-touch with what is going on in the world, and on campus. Given your experience, what do you think of that criticism?
BC I would argue that it is the critic, not Wolfe, who is out of touch. In my freshman dorm in 1990, anything went. Having sex and being sexiled was the mild stuff. One woman across the hall moved her boyfriend into her room for six months. Her roommate slept in the top bunk, the girl and her boyfriend slept in the bottom. Another woman moved her boyfriend in from off campus. He wasn't even paying boarding fees. The only reason I escaped such fate was that my roommate was Japanese and her cultural heritage kept her from engaging in such behavior, as did my faith.
My husband lived in a suite of four young men. The other three set up a keg in their room and had beer parties every weekend. He would come home and find girls passed out in his bed. We had a unofficial unisex bathroom, with boys in the room while girls showered in a nearby stall. Who protects these girls from peeping toms? None of these things was unusual, or curtailed. I found it shocking and dehumanizing. How did sex get so devalued that it was done with others in the room, like a casual conversation? How did people become so rude that they would impose these things on roommates? I couldn't believe that these students, whose parents were paying a princely sum for their room and board, didn't raise a stink and demand their rights as tenants, if not as human beings.
Of course, these liaisons were consensual. However, I think the air of freedom allows predators to take advantage of young women without consequences.
KH Totally disagree, although I also recognize not everyone is necessarily as exposed to these circumstances as I was. Attending a Christian college, for instance, might provide a different experience, or by attending a small school were people are less anonymous some of the risqué behavior would likely be curbed. Speaking for Vanderbilt and Colorado, however, I have to say Wolfe is painting a pretty clear picture (for a freshman year especially). Particularly as it pertains to sex and drugs.
As one who entered my freshman year with a naivete and ambition comparable to Charlotte, I was shocked to find how corruptible I was living in my co-ed dorm the first month of college. Every close girlfriend I had on my hall (maybe 6 would be considered close friends) were virgins at the start of the school year. Most had some exposure or commitment to church in their family background, which was why sex wasn’t an option in high school.
As for school itself, I would say that it worked kind of like a game. Everyone (except a few REALLY spoiled kids) knew the school piece had to happen to sustain the party life so everyone kind of learned to strike their own balance between partying, hooking up and studying…. Charlotte was right to see that while being smart was important, it wasn’t valued nearly as much as being able to be smart and fun at parties and not be prude. The balance is what created success.
Anyway, I could go on and on to emphasize just how accurate Wolfe is in his assessment, but this is the general picture. I guess a few other related issues that he touched on but didn’t delve into as deeply are the side effects of this rampant sexual license, primarily eating disorders and depression for women. I’ve seen lots and lots of both. Birth control, anti-depressents and study drugs were pretty much taken like vitamins by most girls I lived with during college.
4) Where is the book especially strong? especially weak?
BC Wolfe did a masterful job creating a downward spiral that led to Charlotte's seduction and the aftermath. From the beginning of the book, there was no doubt that she would fall, and fall hard. He painted the picture well. However, I found the end unsatisfying. It was as if Wolfe waved a wand and suddenly Charlotte and JoJo were self-actualized, mature people. I did not see the transformation. What could have been the most interesting part of the novel, the climb back up, the restoration, was empty. I have to suspect that this is because Wolfe's underlying philosophy, classical stoicism, is unsatisfying. He excels at identifying the gaping wounds in American culture, but he has no band-aid.
KH I think it is especially strong in pinpointing the reality of college life at what are considered to be most large and/or elite universities. He reveals the deep dissonance between what these institutions claim to promote and what in fact they enable by turning a blind eye. It reveals how much money and prestige can foster sexual and academic irresponsibility when students aren’t accountable to each other, their parents or the university. The characters, I thought, were real and believable. The scenarios Wolfe constructs align with reality. I also appreciated how Wolfe showed the crude side of these realities, not just the glamorous sides students would like to believe about their world. He showed pain as well as temptation and he effectively revealed the inner conflict and loathing various characters felt when they indulged too much the delusions that all of these decisions and behavior are fulfilling.
The greatest weakness of the book, I thought, was Wolfe’s inability to provide a convincing, ending. One is led to believe that Charlotte is a fighter, a headstrong, independent woman who I expected to come through her depression willing to face things as they were and redeem some of her past mistakes, but instead she just seems world-weary and tired as though she doesn’t have the energy to be a moral warrior anymore. There is some mutual redemption between her and Jojo, I suppose, but I was sad to not see her emerge as a heroine but rather as a tired victim not willing to fight anymore and somewhat cynical about the world. I closed the book feeling disappointed, when I felt like there was great opportunity for her to reach some significant conclusions about herself from her experience….
5) How close does he come to "the truth of the human condition," drawing on Walker Percy's criteria for a good book?
BC In the end, I find Wolfe an excellent journalist. He researches well, he describes well, he makes you see what he has seen. He keeps his finger on the pulse of American culture and starts conversations we didn't even know were needed. To me, his writing lacks the spark that turns journalism into literature. There is no underlying wisdom that would make me read the book over and over, no insight that expands my understanding of what it means to be human. He spreads out sordid facts on the table and leaves you to clean them up as you will.
KH With the exception of the ending, which I believe failed to come full circle to a point of complete truth about how Charlotte would likely recover or redeem her previous experiences, I felt like the book did a good job of debunking the popular deception that sexual promiscuity never hurt anyone. It shows the emotional and interpersonal angst of sexual relationships that lack any emotional context and it effectively probes deep questions of human dignity, value and purpose. While I wish there were another 100 pages to explore how Charlotte came to live in her new skin, I appreciated the raw honesty of her inner turmoil and angst and that the novel was set in a moral framework that set right against wrong and matched choices with consequences.
WASHINGTON INSTITUTE RESOURCESMore articles by Steve Garber >
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