"Not in MY experience, baby!" :)
Posted on 12/14/2004 5:14:03 AM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
December 14, 2004 -- LONDON — Writer Tom Wolfe won one of the world's most dreaded literary accolades yesterday — the British prize for bad sex in fiction. Wolfe won it for a couple of purple passages from his latest novel, "I am Charlotte Simmons," a tale of campus life at a fictional Southern university.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
"Not in MY experience, baby!" :)
I finished it last week and thought it was great. Bonfire of the Vanities is one of my favorite novels and this wasn't that good, but it was still great.
Tom Wolfe has a distinctive style and it is sometimes distracting, but the parts I liked best about the book without spoilng anything are:
the anti-achievement mentality where if you try in school you are not "cool" in some way;
the pecking order and structure of the fraternity/sorority types
the intolerance of the "diversity" crowd;
the athlete as celebrity complete with groupies and enablers phenomenon;
the immaturity of college students coupled with their absolute sense of infallibility and invincability.
I recommend the book as one look at our culture in 2005.
Correct. That is the point Wolfe made in his interviews. He's also commenting on the casual sex mentality. He said no one could get turned on by reading the sexual passages in the book. It's his attempt to show how shallow and meaningless it is amongst his characters.
LOL!
Thanks for saying what I couldn't figure out how to say! I thought it was a very good book because it is written through the eyes, words, and thoughts of an extremely intelligent, extremely backwoodsy, naive 18-year old girl...who also has no clue that she is very attractive, too! That's why I thought Wolfe did a great job...he makes us see how she looks at life, how extraordinarily bright she is, and how she faces and changes during the course of her freshman year.
He was apparently pretty accurate, too, about how athletes are treated.
The book IS pretty layered, and is worth reading...but it may not appeal to some.
From what I've read, the "There's always been sex on campus" crowd doesent like this book at all. But theres been a fundamental change in the attitude of young college students,and this book addresses that very directly. Its quite seriously an alarming situation, IMO.
Some say bad--you say good. Is it one of those books you have to finish to get the benefit of the total experience?
Congressman Billybob
I thought the college was supposed to be in Pa.
SPL Pings.
FMCDH(BITS)
In an interview, Wolfe stated that if anyone gets the least bit of pleasure from reading the sex scenes, then he has failed as a writer.
The purpose is to show the shallowness of anonymous sex that is rampant on college campuses.
Caverns huh?
The novel is set at fictional Dupont University which is in (fictionally) Chester. PA. I for one really enjoyed it. It's not as good as Bonfire of the Vanities, but a great look at university life today.
In my case, I really enjoyed the book until about 75% through, then I disliked it almost until the end, then I liked it again.
I would say if you don't enjoy it by the first 75-100 pages it won't get better. And it is pretty long, although Wolfe has a style that I find easy to read quickly.
In my mind, I pictured the fictional Dupont as Duke.
Does Buster Roth have any correlation to Coach K? I hope not! The Dupont of the book also made me think of Duke, but Wolfe has stated it's an amalgam in order to get the right academic / athletic mix.
Chester? That's not fictional. I wish it were.
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