Writes Merve Emre, in "An Unsentimental Education/Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons summons the romantic vision of the university as an unblighted Eden to mock it through the downfall of one of its deceived mortals" (NYRB).
I know you're unlikely to have the needed subscription, but that essay will appear in a new edition of the novel, coming out next month (so wait for that edition if you're thinking of buying the book).
And I would encourage you to click that link if only to see the top of the article, which is illustrated with an Elliott Erwitt photograph, "Women with a sculpture personifying the alma mater at Columbia University, New York City, 1955."
That's one of the best photos I've ever seen! And it is evocative today, with Columbia so much in the news.
"I Am Charlotte Simmons" got a lot of attention when it came out in 2004, and it will be interesting to see reactions to it 20 years later. 2004 was the first year of this blog. I read the book.
And I blogged about George W. Bush's loving it.
I blogged about Tom Wolfe saying: "I have never written a decent word that was dominated by politics. People always talk about me as this right-wing writer. And to them I say, 'What's my agenda? What is political about I Am Charlotte Simmons? What's political about A Man In Full, what's political about The Right Stuff or The Bonfire of the Vanities, or The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test?'"
I blogged about Wolfe's winning the "Bad Sex in Fiction Award," when he intended "to make the sex un-erotic" and said "I will have failed if anyone gets the least bit excited. So much of modern sex is un-erotic, if erotic means flight of fancy or romantic build-up."
The book comes up in a post called "Swarthmore, conquering heteronormativity with pornographic chalkings."
And, perhaps most importantly for my traditional themes, the book contains what I consider to be the best argument against men in shorts, this description of a college professor:
All that elegance was what made the personage of Dr. Lewin seem so curious. Last week, when the class first met, he had worn a plaid cotton shirt and pants -- nothing remarkable about that. The shirt had had long sleeves, and the pants had been long pants. But this morning he had on a short-sleeved shirt that showed too much of his skinny, hairy arms, and denim shorts that showed too much of this gnarly, hairy legs. He looked for all the world like a seven-year-old who at the touch of a wand had become old, tall, bald on top, and hairy everywhere else, an ossified seven-year-old, a pair of eyeglasses with lenses thick as ice pushed up to the summit of his forehead -- unaccountably addressing thirty college students, at Dupont, no less.
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All the characters were pathetic. Too pathetic.
Women, their faces turned from the camera, sit behind a statue of a woman who also faces away. It's a good illustration of "Charlotte", which was about a young woman getting chewed up and spat out by the university experience. It's brilliantly written by Wolfe and I never intend to read it again.
I like the idea of Tom Wolfe more than I like his writing. Although he did hit it out of the park with the right stuff but I only saw the movie of course
Loved "A man in Full" and "Bonfire", and "Simmons" has been on my "To-read" list for a long time. Tagging Wolfe as "Conservative" or "Rightwing" is just the standard Leftwing Technique of labeling everything Non-left as "Rightwing" or "Far-right". Its done deliberately. So, all the dumb leftoids can understand what is Party approved and what is not.
I was thinking the other day of Mailer/Updike/Some other author's attack on Wolfe in the 80s for not being a "real novelist". When the last time anyone talked about an Updike Novel or John Irving one? Mailer is discussed because of junk like Gary Gilmore or Marilyn. His "real novels"? Quite rare.
I have 8 Erwitt books (All signed by him! (He worked with my father)) and I don't recall this photo. The quality of the reproduction is really low, so It surprised me that it was an Erwitt.
Nice to live long enough to see the "popular" (merely) books of my youth (Charlotte Simmons, Lonesome Dove -- see NYRB) become "classics". Maybe it is ancient memory, but I expected to find "Fussell" and "Wolfe" linked in a Google search (Fussell reviewed The Right Stuff for the NYTimes, and was an admirer). I was not surprised to see that three of America's most insecure writers, Mailer, Irving, and Updike, were public critics of Wolfe's novels. Bloom in the Yes column. While I didn't find what Roth thought of Wolfe, I learned that Wolfe had called Roth "...the best of the current novelists. I think he is terrific." I admired both Bonfire and Simmons, and would put both books on a list of those that accurately engaged the emerging issues of their times.
Bonfire is an amazing read, the movie sucked, but the novel was amazing. As good as any novel I ever read, and I have read a lot of novels.
I think that modern, profit driven tech is intentionally destroying all that was good about marriage for both sexes, and unsurprisingly, the marriage rate is falling. Never mind Tinder, where a relative few men keep private harems of women on an endless lockdown of futile hope, until she reaches her sell by date, when she is replaced, that's bad enough, but I just saw an ad watching a hockey game for Hotels.com, where the pitch to a pretty young woman, in the prime of her life for attracting a life partner to raise her children, etc, and the pitch was "find your soulmate... for a week" and they flashed a picture of a man who looked like Bluto from the Popeye cartoons, if you made him extra masculine and ruggedly handsome. The pitch being that you can move on in a week and it will be just a nice memory, while he moves on to the next beautiful young woman, and you have this guys' memory to compare to your future husband. Well, the stats are that the more partners a woman has before marriage, the higher the probability of divorce, but that doesn't matter to Hotel.com's investors, or those of Tinder either. I don't think that communism and fascism are any better, but this new tech capitalism certainly has its evil side.
Haven't read the book, but admire Tom Wolfe. Loved his CSPAN Booknotes interview with Brian Lamb in 2005. Wolfe voted W in 2004.
Tom Wolfe took no prisoners.
The striving working class kid who knew he was too special to go unnoticed since they gave him money and the time to spend doing all that reading (dos Passos, Faulkner, Hemingway, eventually even Tom Wolfe) to turn into the person he thought he wanted to be? Special enough to hold the world that birthed him in contempt?
There is nothing so loathsome as the person you have outgrown. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. Forgive me Lord, for I knew not what I was doing. Only in this distance of time and place do I see the thing for what it was. Honor the milkman. Honor the hairdresser.
I loved I Am Charolette Simons!
I follow college basketball and that part of the book was very interesting to me.
I sent former Rep. Tom Osborn a letter about that book. Tom, of course, is one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. And he is very interested in the lives of young people.
I asked him to pass a law to stop colleges from having co-ed bathrooms in the dorms. Look where we are today.
I don't think it was in the book but rather Wolfe's commentary about co-ed showers. A female student said, "I try to build up a steam curtain in the corner."
If only Wolfe was alive and could revisit campus life today. He was so, so great.
he had a keen eye for the absurd, see the limousine libs fascination with the panthers, he repurposed for part of sherman mccoy's back story, a sense of wonder with the right stuff, the whole me generation, that popped up in marchetti's Roman a Clef as the motivation for the American spy who sells out to the Soviets,
the conversations relayed in bonfire, and later man in full, made me concerned when he put Miami in the crosshairs for his last novel, Back to Blood (I thought why would you let him in with in ear shot) he captured the milieu of that Southern City with a certain grand guignol ambiance,
the conversations relayed in bonfire, and later man in full, made me concerned when he put Miami in the crosshairs for his last novel, Back to Blood (I thought why would you let him in with in ear shot) he captured the milieu of that Southern City with a certain grand guignol ambiance,
Nice photo. Do any women at Columbia dress like that anymore? I like skirts.
had he lived through the last few years, he would have seen some familiar beats, see so called BLM, but also bewildered by some things, that would confuse a Southern gentleman,
Tom Wolfe was the commencement speaker at my college graduation in 1989. I recall that there was a vague undercurrent of discomfort that he wasn't quite an appropriate speaker, though I couldn't figure out why at the time.
A handful of students stood up and turned their backs to him as he spoke, which absolutely scandalized my working class parents. My folks were so grateful that someone from the family made it to college that they just couldn't understand why someone would want to "spoil" the graduation ceremony. I don't recall anything Wolfe said, but I do remember thinking that he gave a witty and engaging speech.
I doubt the school would invite a figure like Tom Wolfe today. If they did, I expect the ensuing protests by a "modern" student body would cause the invitation to be revoked.
like Ricky Gervais for example, he would set fire to too many strawmen, and then you have to call the fire brigade,
he would have been a great chronicler of Elon for example, with his interests in technology and specially space travel
Emre draws interesting connections among Charlotte Simmons, her literary ancestor Emma Bovary and her contemporary instantiation JD Vance. The provincial enters the great world—the cosmopolitan capital, the university—anticipating intellectual enlightenment and spiritual transformation. Sophisticated society turns out to be only ambition and self-absorption: worse, the protagonist learns that the world contains nothing else—it is a materialistic system (defined in economic or evolutionary terms) of endless, pointless competition. In Flaubert, the heroine kills herself. In the updated version, the protagonist gives up and joins the game.
he started out with the old New York Herald Tribune which became New York Magazine, which has become this eldritch thing out of Poe's imaginings see that hagiography of Cuomo, referred recently,
an imperfect film analogue to Wolfe is Whit Stillman, the banking scion, with a wry eye for upper class foibles, Metropolitan, Barcelona, the Last Days of Disco,
Besides feeding Althouse's antipathy for men in shorts Wolfe also exemplified the old-fashioned concept of a uniform. I vaguely recall that -- wearing a uniform -- was a subject we discussed fervently on here. Anyway his white suit, blue striped shirt and silk tie ensemble evokes the uniform elegantly. It reminds me of my university experience at UCR in SoCal, when my calculus professor wore his same exact uniform (brown slacks, white button shirt, brown/gold plaid sport coat) every day.
he novelized the last one, like Tarantino did with once upon a Time in Hollywood,
Barcelona also focuses on this Anti Americanism, in the 1980s, much like the gourmet radicalism we see on the Campuses today,
one of the characters, the naval officer, who is the victim of this
spate of violence, is rightly insensed at the rise of the militants who embrace leftisms
The exact opposite of Pynchon. Although I think both will age well. While ,"The Right Stuff", is undoubtedly Wolfs most famous work, I think "Bonfire" was his best. Like Pynchon is remembered for his ponderous "Gravitys Rainbow", "The Crying of Lot 49" was his best work.
I once had a college class with a prof who wore a suit and tie every day. In an OCD moment I started doodling his tie pattern of the day in my class notes one day, and then did so for the rest of the term. While he had a wide assortment of ties, some new, some obviously old, at the end of the semester I had determined that he had a favorite tie, patterned in diagonal stripes alternating with a paisley pattern, dark red on a muted gray background. I've looked at ties in department stores, garage sales, thrift shops, for the last 40 years and have never seen a similar tie. The search continues. We all need such quests in life.
the whole austin metcalf affair where the perpetrator is the victim, complete with cloying go fund me page for instance,
I started a couple of Wolfe books when I was younger, but never got into them.
The documentary about him is a lot of fun.
Radical Wolfe (trailer)
Radical Wolfe (whole doc)
yes pynchon, (who has a new book out this fall, btw) overstuffs his tale, gravity's rainbow was an over indulgent tale, vineland his sort of sequel set in the 80s, that was already out of date, by the time Rushdie was assigned to review it,
Barcelona also focuses on this Anti Americanism, in the 1980s, much like the gourmet radicalism we see on the Campuses today
Whit Stillman was so underrated! He's the Woody Allen of the right. (Back when that was a compliment). Right-wing comic intellectual is a tiny, tiny market.
Barcelona.
I also liked I am Charlotte Simmons. One thing that I consider perceptive about it is the focus on a big state school.
The media and the Right like to criticize the elite schools, like Columbia, as being the problem, but I don't think that's really correct. JD Vance, the conservatives on the Supreme court, and most other conservative elites went to Ivy league schools and were not somehow corrupted. A little bit of leftwing lunacy at that level isn't doing any harm. (and in fact, 90% of professors at those places don't care about politics anyway).
Rather, the problem is the corruption at the lower tier schools. University of X, and X State University, and the even lower tiers Southern X State University, etc. These are mostly vocational schools for teachers and nurses, and teach less sophisticated students more susceptible to suggestion. Also, the professors there tend to have more of a chip on their shoulder and (anecdotally, but I think it's true) are more radical than the Ivies. This is the sort of school Wolfe criticized in Charlotte and deservedly so.
Elsewhere in today's news Princeton president Eisgruber attacks the Trump administration for politicizing the holy sanctuary of the university. We're going through a major change in what universities are. The last (and maybe the first) big change came when universities adopted the German research model in the 19th century. This led to a Golden Age in the post-WWII period. It's over now -- at least in the humanities and social sciences. And what universities will be in the future -- and if they'll survive -- is unclear.
That squabble between Wolfe, Mailer, Updike and (ugh) Irving only marked how much time had left them behind. Maybe that's unfair when it comes to Wolfe, but I felt like the page had already been turned on him after that.
Campuses down stream are infected by that rot in Morningside and Cambridge, but thats not related to their status,
even though the Campus is supposed to be in pennsylvania, the markers are all related to what happened at Duke and
later UVa
Wolfe probably had the best eye for this, Mailer even in his better days, probably couldn't see clearly, well perhaps Harlot's Ghost, which suffers from the Pynchon problem
Right-wing comic intellectual is a tiny, tiny market.
I say that, but the success of Wolfe suggests otherwise.
Wolfe made his name in the 1970's, within the liberal culture, which prized him. Apparently liberals were way more open about conservative voices back then. They remark about this in the documentary.
Whit Stillman got money in the 1990's to make a few movies. But Stillman never got the attention or support that Woody Allen did. And Stillman's money dried up and his career more or less disappeared.
You can see old clips on youtube of Donahue interviewing Milton Friedman. And Cornel West appearing on William F. Buckley's show. Back in the 1970's, people in the media were open to listening to their opponents and hearing them out. (Much like Joe Rogan today!)
Joe Rogan is not a right-winger. But he is that sort of classic liberal. And he definitely would have had Wolfe on his podcast.
Now do fat women in yoga pants.
I've read a lot (most?) of Wolfe's work and think he's the best American writer of the second half of the last century. I read somewhere that part of his goal was to get away from the introspective and generally small novels that were getting all the reviewers praise and back to novel like those of Dickens that were big and dealt with all levels of contemporary society (and byy small and big he didn't mean page count)
"The Right Stuff" was of some interest in my household. The opening chapter, about the search for a jet crash site and the killed pilot, was gruesome reality, bluntly and dramatically depicted.
The movie had a few well-made scenes, but overall was pretty laughable from the point of view of anyone connected to the business.
was charlotte simmons really pessimistic, look at what came after with the mee too, and other moral panics,
Universities are in some way the remnants of the cult of Vesta, whose vestal virgins tended the sacred fire, were sworn to chastity, and could be trusted with safeguarding the most important documents. That cult, of course, came to be corrupted, just as our universities have been corrupted. The social dynamic of decay seems inevitable, and a society's survival is dependent upon the spontaneous creation of replacement structures. Let's see what happens.
"People always talk about me as this right-wing writer. And to them I say, 'What's my agenda? What is political about I Am Charlotte Simmons? What's political about 'A Man In Full', what's political about 'The Right Stuff' or 'The Bonfire of the Vanities', or 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test'?"
Sooner or later, for better or worse, history always catches up with art.
My favorite Wolfe writing, by far, is Radical Chic. It is an absolutely hilarious satire of the left.
Are the two women hiding behind Columbia's Alma Mater statue symbolic of Columbia's failed female President (Shafik) and failed female Interim President (Armstrong)? Dwight Eisenhower was President of Columbia from 1948 to 1952. Columbia has come a long way (down hill) since then.
Tom Wolfe counts as a conservative in the writing community, but I believe he said that for most of his life he ended up voting for the winner in presidential elections.
Whit Stillman was affiliated somehow with the American Spectator early on, though he later minimized his involvement. Stillman doesn't fit today's idea of a conservative. He's from a monied Manhattan family, somehow distantly associated with the Rockefellers, prep school, Harvard, his father worked in his classmate JFK's administration, but he was a conservative in the sense that something like half of his Harvard class were Maoists and he wasn't. He was a conservative in the sense that he respected traditions and limits, and his unconventional background made his films more interesting than cut-and-dried ideological movies are. That made him a lot like Wolfe.
I enjoyed his trilogy and wish he'd been able to make more films (and Woody Allen fewer). He had trouble raising money and his last couple of movies weren't as good. Stillman's tweets are as depressingly anti-Trump as one would expect from someone with his upbringing, so maybe it's just as well that he's not making movies.
I do think Wolfe uses too many words. HIs vocabulary is wild. And his humor is sharp. That damn Radical Chic makes me laugh out loud, every time I read it. But it's also so bloated and word-heavy that I have trouble finishing the damn thing. Wolfe's like a word-warrior, sumo-class, and he's just going to sit on you and pile the words into your brain until you give up.
Stephen King used to describe all writers as "putter-inners" and "taker-outers." Anyway, Wolfe is definitely a putter-inner. I think you could use one of his books as a murder weapon.
The Right Stuff 436 pages
Bonfire of the Vanities 690 pages
I Am Charlotte Simmons 738 pages
When I was in high school I picked Albert Camus to read, because that was the shortest book on the list.
The Stranger 144 pages
Not bad!
Rather, the problem is the corruption at the lower tier schools. University of X, and X State University, and the even lower tiers Southern X State University, etc. These are mostly vocational schools for teachers and nurses, and teach less sophisticated students more susceptible to suggestion. Also, the professors there tend to have more of a chip on their shoulder and (anecdotally, but I think it's true) are more radical than the Ivies. This is the sort of school Wolfe criticized in Charlotte and deservedly so.
I can't evaluate whether state schools are less or more damaging than Ivies, but I can certify that current-day Penn State, my alma mater, is a progressive loony bin. On the other hand it now has impressive graduate-level research disciplines that aren't entirely stained by the left.
I saw Wolfe give an address at the main campus in the 70's and he was glorious. Penn State wouldn't host the likes of him today, but then again there may be no likes of him today.
I can’t clearly and concisely say why, because it’s complicated. This video talk says something about why men in shorts could be annoying, without the video talk directly addressing men in shorts. Warning: the video is 20 min long and to get why it covers men in shorts you have to watch the whole thing. In fact I only understood the men in shorts tangential reference after reading this post. Thank you.
The hope:
"...and I like to believe that they have experiences that cannot be reduced to the quest for social dominance, that their desire to belong does not always end in the dreariest conformity."
And the reality: "Hey everyone, let's dress up like terrorists and parade in favor of Hamas!"
He was a conservative in the sense that he respected traditions and limits, and his unconventional background made his films more interesting than cut-and-dried ideological movies are.
I don't think Metropolitan was political at all, it was more a comedy-of-manners. Excellent movie, very funny. His second movie, Barcelona, is a hilarious right-wing movie. His third movie, the damn disco thing, killed his career for a decade.
His fourth movie, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UGIkWvfBEQ">Damsels in Distress, is very good. I liked it almost as much as his first two. It made no money, unfortunately. He's an artist who should have had a much bigger career.
Maybe he was too nice? Woody Allen and Tom Wolfe both had mean streaks. If you want to be funny, it helps to be willing to shock people a little. Stillman is nice and very bourgeois.
Doomed Bourgeois in Love.
Damsels in Distress.
Our expectations of "college" are relics of a time when most people did not go to college, and those who did were often exceptional, one way or another.
I really disliked this book and did not catch any conservative message at all. I hated all the characters, and perhaps Charlotte the most. Yuck. What was the message? I don't care.
That said, I am not trying to crap on this post. It was very interesting to read what others thought of the book.
Merve Emre sounds as if he or she is accepting of the ideological perversities university and college students swim in. Or approving of them.
Updike's estimation of Tom Wolfe was a rare error by him. Nobody under sixty reads either of them now, which is a shame, because they were both genius observers.
I spent enought time observing Atlanta's corridors of racial and financial power-players in the Bill Campbell days to be amazed that Wolfe could capture them with such picture perfect insight. But I couldn't finish Charlotte Simmons because I was teaching college freshmen at an elite university, and I couldn't stomach what I saw girls and boys doing and being done to them by others. It's a chillingly accurate portrayal of the tipping point,too chilling for me at the time.
One of my finest professors was one of the few (humanities) ones on campus who was sober and sane and morally adult and wore a suit to class and published a book every year or so -- with the exception of the week baseball season opened, when he wore giant shorts to class and sang Take Me Back to the Ball Game, then immediately returned to his meticulous lecture notes, corny jokes underlined in red. Many accomplished people flew back to Sarasota to celebrate his retirement. I still use his books. I forgive the shorts, in that one case. Male shorts at work are a despairing thing.
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