Bowdoin College: COLUMN: Re-thinking summer reading.

(From University Wire)

Byline: Benjamin Peisch

The student body at Bowdoin College was asked recently about recommendations for next year's first-year book. The timing could not have been better, because I just finished a great new novel over Thanksgiving: "I Am Charlotte Simmons" by the incomparable Tom Wolfe. Since the last four selections have been left-wing propaganda pieces, "I Am Charlotte Simmons" gets my vote for next year.

Tom Wolfe, now in his 70s, is one of the most important writers and social critics of the past 40 years. He defined the Cold War space race ("The Right Stuff"), New York limousine liberalism ("Radical Chic") and the insanity of early '70s San Francisco ("The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"). In the 1980s, he moved on to novels that defined decades and cities with "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1980s New York) and "A Man In Full" (1990s Atlanta). Now, "I Am Charlotte Simmons" successfully defines the intellectual and moral free fall of 21st century academia.

The novel is set at Dupont University, a fictional Ivy League college in Pennsylvania. The protagonist is Charlotte Simmons, a brilliant student from a tiny town in the mountains of North Carolina, who yearns to be surrounded by intellectual excellence at Dupont. Unfortunately, when she arrives on campus, she finds out moral experimentation and social climbing have replaced intellectualism.

In typical Tom Wolfe fashion, several plots weave together. Hoyt is a frat boy and sexual predator who holds career killing information about a potential Republican presidential candidate. Adam is a social misfit, investigative journalist, and rabid intellectual, yearning for a Rhodes scholarship. Jojo is the only white starter (nicknamed "Token") on the basketball team who gets caught up in an academic scandal. All three of these men develop attractions to Charlotte because of her innocence, quick wit and physical beauty.

Tom Wolfe researched the novel by spending years in a blue blazer, ...