So, is it possible to satirize the undergraduate experience, bloated by its own colliding hormones, insular politics, egotism, and smarts? Tom Wolfe hasn't succeeded at it. His parody takes what was already a clown, added a wider smile, floppier shoes, and brighter makeup, but removed the miniature bicycle and the squirting flower. What's left is a clown without the gags, an entertainer with no ability to entertain. The final portrait looks more clownish, but is also less interesting and surprising, and no more revealing. Wolfe could have simply written about the true undergrad experience and come up with all the juicy stuff, freshly squeezed and just as tart. In real life, the nerdy Adam would be a scholar and a sadist. Hoyt could very well be preserving his virginity until marriage. College is a bizarre convergence of flesh, brains, money, and imagination. There is a lot of porn and essay writing, sports and reading, sex and thinking, drugs and sleep, and there is a lot of good and bad produced from this very strange brew. Students like Adam, Hoyt, and Jojo exist, but nearly 700 pages without any dissent from their depiction is a stridently myopic portrait. In terms of sheer shock value, it is also no more scandalous.
The only redeeming quality of I Am Charlotte Simmons is Wolfe's underlying worldview, which gives it a measure of intrigue. The novel, like all of Wolfe's work, pines after the shifting constitution of status. Wolfe never correctly exposes how groups socialize in college and reduces numerous tribal orbits into a single social hierarchy with jocks at the top and geeks at the bottom. But his characters' desires prove compelling in so much as they don't care how they win status and fame as long as its won. This is, in fact, Charlotte's discovery about herself in the novel's final pages. In a last bit of soul searching she wonders, "Wasn't it Charlotte Simmons who wanted a life of the mind? Or was what she wanted all along was to be considered special and to be admired for that in itself, not matter how she achieved it?" Simmons dismisses the question as "ridiculous" and moves on to other thoughts. Wolfe, though, has answered it for her.
