Free Republic

One book that President Bush has apparently been recommending to fellow readers is Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons", an R-rated behind-the-scenes look at just how wild today's universities have become. Wolfe details how sex is frequently reduced to heartless hookups and binge drinking, which leads to many risky, almost-anonymous sexual encounters. CBN News checked in with students at several top campuses to see if Wolfe got it right. Wolfe is known for doing exhaustive research, and for "I Am Charlotte Simmons" he spent many months interviewing students and hanging out on campuses, absorbing the atmosphere. Students that CBN News...

"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?" – Robert Browning, A Toccata of Galuppi's. In this hour of "bests," some will tell you the last restaurant they went to is the absolute best — the ribs or the Caesar salad, the filet or the yummy breads or the obscene desserts with more goop than anywhere else. For others, it's their golf clubs or their car. For still others it's the last book they read — such as, in this case, Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. The chichi critics have panned Charlotte for two...

News Flash to all Freepers reading Tom Wolfe’s “I am Charlotte Simmons”: I can personally attest that the story of the “Governor of California” represented in the book, who receives oral sex from a college undergrad coed, is based on a true story. The true governor was the Governor of Arkansas, and the year was 1988 (yes, him!). The event was not a Commencement, with the governor-as-commencement-speaker, as represented in the book: in reality, it was at Washington and Lee University’s quadrennial “Mock Convention”: it was a mock Democratic Convention, and Clinton was here as a speaker. It occurred not...

Tom Wolfe’s best-selling novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons" has focused unwanted attention—unwanted at least by college officials—on the sexual antics of American college students. The behavior is scandalous, but an even greater scandal is what students are being taught. This mis-education is the subject of a new book by former BreakPoint editor James Nelson Black. In Freefall of the American University, Black describes how “colleges and universities are corrupting the minds and morals of the next generation.” That’s quite an indictment, but Freefall will leave any open-minded reader realizing that the evidence supports it. As Black puts it, “the university...

Tom Wolfe's Struggle With God and the Greeks A review of I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe By Ken Masugi This is an ugly book, but it could have been even uglier, being as it is a book about the life of the mind. And protagonist Charlotte Simmons of Sparta, North Carolina is scarcely an heroic figure. Prized by her protective family and a determined teacher, Charlotte becomes an outstanding student—admitted with full scholarship to Dupont University (a fictitious Ivy League school with a Georgetown or Duke-level basketball team). She is a freshman version of Sherman McCoy of...

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.