Good Charlotte?

Tom Wolfe attacks the collegians in his recent I Am Charlotte Simmons, a walloping 676 pages of intricate satire. The setting is fictional Dupont University, a school that embodies the intelligentsia and prestige of Harvard and the athleticism of Notre Dame. The eponymous character is Charlotte Simmons, a “down-home” freshman from rural South Carolina. She has taken only two things with her to college: the memory of her complete academic domination in secondary education (she being the first student from her high school to attend Dupont); and the moral consciousness fashioned by her Bible-believing and simple mother. Ostensibly, then, the narrative conflict occurs between Charlotte with her quaint values and Dupont with its educational philosophy mirroring that of many major universities in America today.

Wolfe provides us with some information on the intellectual currents popular at Dupont. He prefaces the book with the notation that one of the teachers at Dupont, the neuroscientist Mr. Starling, won the Nobel Prize for his work on a famous experiment. Starling performed amygdalectomies on thirty cats, after which they became unremittingly concupiscent. A control group, untouched but left in the vicinity of the amygdalectomized cats, eventually began to mimic the behavior of the test group. Starling’s resulting theory indicated that external stimuli, such as social interaction or even physical manipulation of brain matter (as a later class lecture reveals), causes the individual animal or human to do, and even intend to do, different things. Starling concludes with José Delgado that the soul is merely a “soul”: nothing more than a “useful illusion” or a “transient composite of materials from the environment.”

Across campus, another intellectual viewpoint can be ascertained in the history teacher, Mr. Quat. A product of the upheavals of the 1960s, Quat is ultra-liberal, fervently politically correct (when it suits him), and will not abide the current degradation of the campus as it eases academic requirements for its basketball stars. He is portrayed as principled and consistent, although by the end we find this to be an illusion. His philosophy has as its ending point the lone individual, the person nondescript and washed of any outstanding physical, social, or cultural traits. Both of these currents, the neuroscientific and the politically correct, form two heads of the Hydra that has overtaken Dupont. Rather than show its students a more excellent way, as its forebears did, the school instead teaches them that nothing is sacred, the Nietzschean will to power being all that life offers.

As Mark Bowden in The Atlantic Monthly (April 2006) has helpfully pointed out, the above-mentioned feline experimentation foreshadows the social situation at Dupont. In this case, the basketball team, composed of dull “mercenaries” whose only purpose at the school is to win NCAA championships, is the amygdalectomized test group. The control group is the student body proper. Predictably, the student body has conformed its social paradigm to the coarse, thoughtless, sex-crazed, and altogether deplorable example given by the basketball team. Students converse in the “Fuck Patois,” a dialect surprisingly effective, given the limited number of words available (Beware: Simmons is one of the crudest contributions to serious literature I have seen). The competitive drive exhibited by the sports team has infected the rest of campus, in the form of social elitism. The fraternities and sororities display a heightened version of this elitism. Nobody unfashionable or “dorky” is worthy of their attention. Few students are interested in relationships with ends beyond copulation. Intimate relations are to be developed immediately, with minimal exertion, and can be deserted on impulse. “Insouciance” is the most valued character trait. Sarcasm and derision rule.

Into all of this steps Charlotte Simmons, the bright and shining student who is capable and willing to buck the system and, in doing so, define herself against it. But this is not what Wolfe has in mind. The attentive reader will realize that Charlotte is as entwined in Dupont's materialist philosophy as anyone. She may be a product of her mother’s moral convictions, but she does not have the religious beliefs to back them up; and thus she abandons them when necessary. Instead, the conflict is within Charlotte’s own mind: her desire for love fights against the ingrained dogmas that souls do not exist, social recognition outmodes relationships, and the will to power is all that matters. This conflict is played out as Charlotte sifts her way through relationships with three very different males, each vying for her affection.

One of the delightful aspects of Wolfe’s prose is its attention to detail. He has perfected the technique of inserting into the narrative short phrases or words that recall earlier episodes. In many cases, this serves to tie together themes and enlighten the careful reader. I received the impression that nothing is wasted – that even passing references to earlier events contribute to Wolfe’s purpose. For example, the humorous sketch of the sorority girls’ orders of sarcasm (“Sarc 1, Sarc 2, Sarc 3”) is evoked several times throughout the book. One gets the feeling that Wolfe himself uses these categories as he levels his critique at Dupont and its regnant social and intellectual ideas.

Wolfe also produces many interesting asides with his imagery. One example of this is the juxtaposition of the basketball coach’s office building with Starling’s building. Both buildings are sparkling new monuments to the men who dwell within them; one is devoted to athletics, the other to intellectual pursuits. From the tones of key characters, one would expect a contrast between the inanity of Dupont’s interest in sports with a more “correct” interest in modern science. However, the imagery betrays Wolfe’s real opinion that the two institutions, while seemingly opposed to each other, are merely different manifestations of the same dismal philosophy: power and prestige matter more than content. Rule or be ruled.

Alongside clever imagery, the reader also encounters many minor themes, anecdotes, and set pieces – too many, in fact, to do justice to here. Wolfe enjoys himself as he spots delicious ironies and humorous situations, and then exploits them for all they are worth. There is much in the book that may be missed at first glance.

Throughout, Wolfe indicts current intellectual attitudes and, as alluded to earlier, operates in the mode of satire: attacking and ridiculing the subject by exaggerating its influence in a fictional setting. Dupont’s underlying intellectual current is real enough, but the practical outworkings of its philosophy have been taken to their logical extremes. This, thankfully, has not yet occurred in our nation’s universities. And, if the author’s warning is heeded, perhaps it never will.

By the end, the reader may be left wondering who has prevailed: Charlotte or Dupont. In my reading, Charlotte beats Dupont at its own game. Unfortunately, the rules of the game have been set beforehand by Dupont. Charlotte becomes a master in an arena of slaves and she knows – even accepts – this. But she never looks beyond herself in order to ascend toward something higher, something that would mold and shape her into a better person. In the larger picture, Dupont bests her. The unease with which she inhabits her new position of prominence at the end of the novel is indicative of the yearning that each human being has for something more. She still seeks the “ghost in the machine,” even though the roar of popularity and attention drowns it out. Beneath the mask of a happy ending (which fooled a number of reviewers), Wolfe has shown us that life under a postmodern, materialist rubric cannot win and, if it does, humanity loses.

- Roger Dixon