I Am Charlotte Simmons

I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

A bright girl (Charlotte Simmons) from rural North Carolina goes off to fictional DuPont college, one of the top schools in the United States. There she encounters the prep-school elite that are more concerned with sex and sports than academics. She discovers that her French literature class is conducted in English - and is a popular one for jocks. In the class, she notices a student starts to give a smart answer, then plays dumb jock. The student later hits on her. She resists, but encourages him to not be dumb. (She didn't realize he was a basketball star.)  She switches out of that class and succeeds academically, but becomes disillusioned with the social life. There is plenty of underage drinking and her roommate boots her out in the middle of the night to have sex. She falls to peer pressure with some other girls and attends a frat party. A frat boy comes on to her. She spends time with him, but resists when he tries to get her alone in a room. One more boy, "a dork", comes onto her after running into her at the library and gym.

Despite not trying hard, she has a frat boy, a jock and a nerd all wanting her. They also have some connections to each other. The "dork" is on the newspaper and doing a story related to the frat boy and some bad behavior from the California governor. The dork works as an academic tutor and wrote a paper for the jock. At a tailgate, some boys get in a fight over her. The frat boy ends up stepping him to defend her. She later goes back to thank him. He invites her to an out of town frat formal. There, she ends up getting drunk and having sex with the frat boy. Gossip spreads after that and she feels horrible and loses her friends.

When she goes home for Christmas, she finds that is not home anymore. Her life with the rich kids at school is in a different universe than her rural home life. Her depression is also hitting her, resulting in her being even more distant from her family.

When she returns, her depression hits high gear. She doesn't want to be in her room with the other girls. She can't do much of anything. The dork boy helps save her. She moves in to his apartment (in a non-sexual way). He helps her to improve enough to go to her finals and eventually get mostly out of her depression. Then things flip. The dork tries to spill all beans to a professor regarding the paper he wrote for the jock. However, the professor uses that as an admission of guilt to press charges. Now he is depressed and needs her help. She helps for a bit, but is not as patient as he was. She eventually gets him to read his email and finds that his story about the governor's misdeeds is blowing up and the professor is now willing to drop his charges. As part of this, the frat boy has also become popular in school - but also lost his near-six-figure job.

The novel then jumps to a brief epilogue. The jock has had a career renaissance. He is one of the top players on the team. He is also challenging himself academically. He went against the coach's desires and took an advanced philosophy class. The next semester he challenged himself with even more academically challenging classes. Charlotte is now his girlfriend and has been helping push him to his academic success.

The book is a fairly easy read, but it is long and vulgar. The language is a bizarre combination of profanity and anatomical terms. The characters are mostly caricatures. The only character that experiences real growth is the basketball player who realizes that academics and discipline are valuable - and can improve his on-court performance. The main character spends time stepping out of her zone, but realizes it just made her feel worse. Keeping true to herself is what lead to a better experience. 

The author was a half-century removed from college when he wrote this book. He tried to get some details through research. This was written at a point in time that doesn't exist anymore. Cell phone were just coming into use - but only as phones. Social media was not yet a thing. College athletes still had the mirage of being students and were not yet fully professionalized. The view in the book is already dated. There were also some key details that were just missed. The school had finals after Christmas break. While high schools may do that, almost every college finishes before break. It also stretches credulity that all the "important" guys would be hitting on the same country girl. And would she be so cruel to just ditch the dork (even after telling her family that he was her boyfriend.)  What is the point of a not-quite accurate portrayal of college life with stock characters? Perhaps it is just an exercise in how 70-year old men see college students.