![]() ![]() ![]() Unfortunately for us, Wolfe does not seem to think too highly of today’s college students. Rather than revelatory, much of the novel is confirmed and familiar. But in “Charlotte Simmons,” much of Wolfe’s “got it” moments are little more than restatements of worn clichés. The man has an unrivaled perceptiveness - it’s what allows the 74-year-old aristocrat to write about 18-year-old college kids so convincingly. ![]() There are several such moments in the book, as there are in almost everything Tom Wolfe writes. For me, at that moment, Wolfe truly got it. Wolfe’s description of Roxbury Latin as embodying “an atmosphere of old-fashioned Protestant scrubbed-wood asceticism” was simply startling. There was a moment reading Tom Wolfe’s engaging but flawed collegiate epic, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” when I nearly fell out of my bed: the mention of my tiny, all-boys high school in Boston. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |