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''I Am Charlotte Simmons'' is a
2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...
novel by
Tom Wolfe Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...
, concerning sexual and status relationships at the fictional Dupont University. Wolfe researched the novel by talking to students at
North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...
,
Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, Penn,
Duke Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ran ...
,
Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...
, and
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
. Wolfe suggested it depicts the American university today at a fictional college that is "
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
,
Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
,
Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
, Stanford, Duke, and a few other places all rolled into one."


Plot

''I Am Charlotte Simmons'' is the story of college student Charlotte Simmons's first semester-and-a-half at the prestigious Dupont University. A high school graduate from a poverty-stricken rural town, her intelligence and hard work at school have been rewarded with a full scholarship to Dupont. As Charlotte prepares to say goodbye to her family and leave for college, an event happens at Dupont that will play an important role in her future. Hoyt Thorpe, member of the exclusive and powerful
fraternity A fraternity (from Latin language, Latin ''wiktionary:frater, frater'': "brother (Christian), brother"; whence, "wiktionary:brotherhood, brotherhood") or fraternal organization is an organization, society, club (organization), club or fraternal ...
Saint Ray, and fellow frat brother Vance, stumble upon an unnamed
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
(who was at the college to speak at the school's
commencement ceremony Graduation is the awarding of a diploma to a student by an educational institution. It may also refer to the ceremony that is associated with it. The date of the graduation ceremony is often called graduation day. The graduation ceremony is al ...
) receiving
oral sex Oral sex, sometimes referred to as oral intercourse, is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a person by another person using the mouth (including the lips, tongue, or teeth) and the throat. Cunnilingus is oral sex per ...
from a female college student. When the governor's bodyguard spots the two fraternity members, a fight ensues with Hoyt and Vance beating up the bodyguard and fleeing. The story of the night soon spreads across campus, increasing Hoyt's popularity. Charlotte arrives at Dupont in the fall. Her roommate is wealthy Beverly, the daughter of the CEO of a huge multinational insurance company. She is obsessed with sex, in particular with members of the school's
lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively ...
team. Jojo Johanssen is a
white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
athlete on the college's predominantly black
basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
team. He is struggling to keep his position because the school recently recruited an up-and-coming
black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
freshman player, and the coach wants to bench Jojo in his senior year. This would severely hurt Jojo's chances of playing in "the league" (the
NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
). Jojo enjoys the spoils of being a college athlete, such as using a tutor program to force other students to complete his school assignments. Jojo's "tutor" Adam Gellin is, like Charlotte, from a working-class background. Adam writes for the college's independent newspaper and is a member of the "Millennial Mutants," a group of like-minded intellectuals who oppose the
anti-intellectualism Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically mo ...
and class snobbery they see in their fellow students. Charlotte and Adam first meet at the university's computer lab, where Adam is to write a paper for Jojo. Charlotte does not back down when Adam insists that he needs the computer more than she does. Adam is instantly smitten. Charlotte finds herself dealing with the sexual temptations of college life, culminating in her hooking up with Hoyt, who tells Charlotte of catching California's governor receiving oral sex from a college student. He also tells Charlotte he knows that Adam Gellin has begun investigating the incident and how, at the behest of the governor a large
Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
firm has offered Hoyt a high-paying entry-level job in exchange for his silence. (The firm, Pierce & Pierce, is the name of the one that Sherman McCoy works for in Wolfe's earlier novel, ''
The Bonfire of the Vanities ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'' is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish as ...
''.) Hoyt and Charlotte attend an important fraternity formal together, after which Hoyt takes full advantage of a drunken Charlotte, seducing her into giving up her virginity to him. The following morning, Charlotte is dumped by Hoyt. She is further humiliated when she returns to campus and discovers that Hoyt's seduction and rejection has been made public via two girls Charlotte had previously befriended. The two cruelly mock Charlotte, both over her poverty-stricken background, and for how she drunkenly lost her virginity. This drives Charlotte into a depression and eventually into the arms of Adam, who has wanted Charlotte for her beauty, innocence, and intellect since they first met. Charlotte finally emerges from her depression but finds that she has received terrible grades (B, B−, C−, D) for her first semester at Dupont. As Adam prepares to publish his article, his world collides with Jojo Johanssen's when a paper that Adam wrote for the athlete is accused of being
plagiarized Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
. Jojo, who treats Adam as beneath him socially, denies the plagiarism charge and protects the athletic department's perversion of the athlete/tutor program from being exposed. Jojo has begun to transform himself academically from a stereotypical "dumb jock" into a student who takes his academics seriously and even develops an interest in
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
(partly as a result of Charlotte's influence). Jerome Quat, Jojo's professor, confronts Adam about the plagiarized paper and shows sympathy toward him in a college dominated by students obsessed with sports and sex. However, when Adam confesses to having written the paper for Jojo, the professor double-crosses him. He will sacrifice Adam in order to bring down the basketball program, which has circled the wagons to protect Jojo. This devastates Adam, who breaks down and needs Charlotte to take care of him as he waits to be formally charged with cheating. In the meantime, Adam's article on "The Night of the Skullfuck" is published. The sordid details of sex, violence, bribery, and a high-profile political figure cause it to be picked up by the national media. The governor's Presidential ambitions are potentially ruined, and the job offer/bribe made to Hoyt is revoked, effectively shattering Hoyt's life. Hoyt now faces a post-graduation judgment day, with his family's life savings exhausted in order to pay for his college education, and a college transcript with such bad grades that will effectively keep him from getting a job as an investment banker. Jojo's and Adam's necks are saved, as the liberal college professor decides to drop the entire plagiarism complaint so as to avoid undercutting Adam's credibility in destroying the conservative governor's political career. Adam's self-esteem restored, he begins to bask in the glow as the student who brought down a governor. Adam and Charlotte drift apart and she begins to date Jojo, who keeps his position as a starter on the team, in fact becoming a far better player due to Charlotte's influence and his decision to cultivate his mind. Charlotte ascends to the envied position of girlfriend of a star athlete. One scene at the end has Charlotte in Jojo's Large SUV when 2 of the sorority girls that previously mocked her pull up to say hi to Jojo and see Charlotte in the car and say hi like they are old friends. Later one of them invites Charlotte to join their sorority-when Charlotte says she doesn't have money for that she hints that something can be worked out. Charlotte now reflects upon her first semester with a different view, looking down at her former friends, who gleefully gossiped about her humiliation, and at Hoyt, who casually threw her away. She no longer feels intellectualism is what is most important to her — rather it is being a person recognized as special, regardless of the reason.


Major themes

The book develops themes Wolfe introduces in the title essay from his book ''
Hooking Up ''Hooking Up'' is a collection of essays and a novella by American author Tom Wolfe, a number of which were earlier published in popular magazines. The essays cover diverse topics dating from as early as 1965, including both non-fiction and ficti ...
''. The novel centers on Charlotte, a naive new student at Dupont University, a school boasting a top-ranked basketball program and an
Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...
academic reputation. Despite Dupont's
elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. D ...
status, in the minds of its students, sex, alcohol, and social status rule the day. The student culture is focused upon gaining material wealth, physical pleasure, and a well-placed social status; academics are only important insofar as they help achieve these goals.


Research

Wolfe took the name "Dupont University" from Dupont Hall, one of the halls where classes are held at his ''alma mater'',
Washington and Lee University , mottoeng = "Not Unmindful of the Future" , established = , type = Private liberal arts university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.092 billion (2021) , president = William C. Dudley , provost = Lena Hill , city = Lexingto ...
in Lexington,
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
. The school discussed in the book appears to be an amalgamation of several elite universities. Wolfe denies that the book is fully based on Duke, from which his daughter Alexandra graduated in 2002. The fictional "St. Ray's" fraternity is most certainly based upon
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
's
St. Anthony Hall St. Anthony Hall or the Fraternity of Delta Psi is an American fraternity and literary society. Its first chapter was founded at Columbia University on , the Calendar of saints, feast day of Anthony the Great, Saint Anthony the Great. The frater ...
, or "St. A's," where Wolfe attended several events researching for the book, "St. A's" being on Penn's Locust Walk, with fictional "St. Ray's" residing on Wolfe's "Ladding Walk." The basketball star, Jojo Johanssen, is a jock/celebrity character, derived from colleges like the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
,
University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a Public University, public Land-grant University, land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentu ...
, Duke, Stanford,
Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...
and the
University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...
, where, in Wolfe's perception, student athletes are treated as superior. At the time of publication,
JJ Redick Jonathan Clay "JJ" Redick (born June 24, 1984) is an American former professional basketball player who is a podcaster and sports analyst for ESPN. He was selected 11th overall by the Orlando Magic in the 2006 NBA draft. He played college baske ...
was a prominent white basketball player at Duke University. There is also a reference in the book to a freshman dormitory "Giles", which is an actual freshman dorm at Duke University. Besides college life, athletics, and youth sex culture, another major theme that also began in ''Hooking Up'' is Tom Wolfe's interest in neuroscience, specifically the relationship between brain chemistry and free will. Simmons is exposed to questions about inevitability and genetics by her professor Dr. Victor Ransome Starling. (At Washington & Lee James Holt Starling, Ph.D. was a faculty member from 1942 to 1983, a biology professor from 1951 to 1983 and a former head of the Biology Department.) In the context of the book, questions of free will are posed by the characters' various dramas as Charlotte decides whether or not she will adopt the sexual norms of campus life and Johanssen attempts to become a better student and more disciplined person generally. Despite the main characters seemingly confirming the science of inevitability, two side characters (Adam Gellin and Hoyt) are both altered considerably by a chance encounter with a presidential candidate.


Reception

Reviewer
Jacob Weisberg Jacob Weisberg (born 1964) is an American political journalist, who served as editor-in-chief of The Slate Group, a division of Graham Holdings Company. In September 2018, he left Slate to co-found Pushkin Industries, an audio content company, w ...
of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote "Wolfe is always showing us something we haven't quite noticed. But after three thick novels and a novella (surely he will never write a short story), the issue remains: Why does a writer whose ambitions are so fundamentally journalistic insist on processing his reportage into fiction? You may never put down a Tom Wolfe novel. But you never reread one, either." London-based ''
Literary Review ''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years by v ...
'' gave Wolfe its 2004
Bad Sex in Fiction Award ''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years by v ...
, an "honor" established "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel", for his writing in ''I Am Charlotte Simmons''. Wolfe's 2018 obituary in ''The New York Times'' referenced mixed reviews for the book.Deirdre Carmody and William Grimes
Tom Wolfe, Pyrotechnic 'New Journalist' and Novelist, Dies at 88
''The New York Times'', May 15, 2018, accessed May 15, 2018.


Proposed adaptation

In 2005, the film rights to ''I Am Charlotte Simmons'' were purchased by Trilogy Entertainment, with co-founder John Watson producing and writing the screenplay. Three years later,
Liz Friedlander Liz Friedlander is an American music video, television director and television producer. Originally from New York City, Friedlander moved to Pennsylvania to attend the Drama Conservatory school at Carnegie Mellon University. She then moved to Lo ...
was attached as director, while
HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
began looking at developing the book for television. In 2021, Veritas Entertainment acquired the television rights for ''I Am Charlotte Simmons''. The series is being developed at
Paramount Television Studios Paramount Television Studios (formerly known as Paramount Television from 2013 to 2020) is an American television production and distribution company, that is a division of Paramount Pictures, a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It is the success ...
, with
Brian Yorkey Brian Yorkey is an American playwright and lyricist. His works often explore dark and controversial subject matter such as mental illness, grief, the underbelly of suburbia, and ethics in both psychiatry and public education. Early life Yorkey w ...
as showrunner.


References


External links


Slate Book Club review


''The New York Times,'' November 16, 2004 {{Tom Wolfe 2004 American novels American satirical novels Campus novels English-language novels Farrar, Straus and Giroux books Novels by Tom Wolfe Novels set in Pennsylvania