Crying Wolfe

So last night I finished reading a real shit pile of a novel, and it occurred to me the most important question to ask about it is: Why, given that this book was such a tremendous piece of crap, did I read all of its nearly 700 pages? Seriously. Why the fuck did I just do that? (And why, since I started reading the book, has the word “fuck” become a much more prominent part of my vocabulary?)

The answer is Tom Wolfe. Now, as a general rule, I kinda like Tom Wolfe. Just kinda. Bonfire of the Vanities is one of the great novels I have ever read and much of his reporting is excellent, as well. A Man In Full is a very good book, just not one I was able to love. But his newest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, the immovable doorstop I finished last night, is a miserable disappointment.

I am not in the least against putting a book down if its not worth reading. There are too many books in this world and not enough days left in my life to waste too many reading crap. But I kept reading this book. Maybe it was hardheadedness. I wanted to like this book. Wolfe’s previous two novels do an incredibly good job of really speaking to their topics; here he was turning his focus on college life in the new millennium. Something I’ve experienced! I thought I might like this book so much. I didn’t. Let’s talk briefly about why.

Above all things, the writing. I’m not of the school that good writing has to be difficult to read, as I think most of you know. I love Michael Ondaatje and James Joyce but I’m also a huge fan of Dickens, John Irving, and Stephen King. It’s not the simplicity of the writing in this book that fails. It’s just bad writing. Most of the prose has the feeling of the first person, except that the story is always told in the third person and alternates between the points of view of the brilliant but naïve Charlotte and the three men who desperately want to get into her pants. Wolfe likes narration of this sort because he can be inside a character’s head but also step outside to wax philosophical, which is often when he gets into the most trouble. His early dissertation on the language of people our age, the Fuck Patois as he calls it, is enjoyable to read, it’s funny, and it’s so right. And yet so wrong. Wolfe wants us to believe it’s an isolated thing, this liberal use of the word. He seems to think it’s a college thing, an under 30 thing. Hasn’t he ever seen a Quentin Tarantino movie? This is indicative of how Wolfe consistently gets so close to the truth and then fails. Throughout the book I found myself thinking, “My God! Yes! This is what it’s like!” Only to read one more sentence in which the author completely obliterates his credibility. Memo to Mr. Wolfe: It’s not news that college campuses are absolutely dripping with sex. It’s not news because it’s been that way forever.

And how bad the sex in this book is. I guess he won the bad sex writing award and I cannot imagine a book more deserving. Characters don’t get fingered in this book, certain parts of their mons get prodded at by the tips of the digits of other characters. Are you kidding me? No one thinks like that. Ever. Especially not while wedged in the front seat of a car making out.

To a great extent, I think Wolfe – one of the great reporters of our time, in truth – didn’t do a very good job with his research here. Its as if he visited a number of college campuses and heard any number of salacious stories and not only believed them all but decided that must be the tip of the iceberg. This is another way the narrator fails. As a reader I can’t discern a difference between a section where he’s overstating reality because that’s what Charlotte would be doing (ie, not every single girl on campus wear Dieseil jeans, is Charlotte exaggerating? Or is Wolfe that naïve?), or because he’s just wrong.

The school setting – Dupont University – is a fictional place with both stellar athletics and academics of the highest standard, as well. That’s hard enough to believe, but generally I found myself thinking of Duke when I thought of Dupont. Now, I remind you that I went to a much bigger school than Duke, but one that is surely no slouch in basketball and one that is pretty rabidly sports obsessed. But not like this. Wolfe spends many pages of his book dissecting what is and is not cool in the college student’s mind, and again he is mostly right except that, given how often random students shout at the basketball player character “Go go, Jojo!” he must think that sort of display is also cool. No. It’s not cool to even acknowledge that a basketball player in your class is anything but a normal student … until later that night when you’re actually at the game.

Finally, and maybe most glaringly wrong, is the bizarre sexual dynamic in this book. It’s one thing for the basketball players to have “groupies.” I can imagine that not being entirely too far from the truth – although in my experience, the players I knew were no more likely to be able to point at a girl and have her come back to his room than I would be if I tried the trick. But the females in this book are disturbingly pathetic. Charlotte’s drunken roommate outside a lacrosse player’s room begging for sex is one of the most ridiculous scenes I’ve ever read. It’s just not like that, and I can’t fully understand where Wolfe got the idea that it’s girls who have to ask for sex. It never has been that way in human history, and it’s sure not now. But that speaks to the larger surreal quality of the book: how completely obsessed it is with the male. I have never read so much about muscles, even in a human physiology textbook. I have never been asked to think so much about what it means to be a man. And in a book where the main character is female. All I’m saying, Tom, is it makes me wonder ...

So why did I read this damnable thing? Well, it’s a good story. It’s not a new story in any way and it has more flaws than I have ever hinted at here, but Wolfe can still move a plot along. Charlotte’s story is implausible, yes, and unrealistic, true, but it’s also moving. It’s engaging. It just ought to have been told better.