<p>Carolyn, I guess this article has been tackled on a new thread.</p>
<p>I read Charlotte Simmons over the christmas holidays and also found it to be a page-turner. Of course, you have to take it all with a grain of salt...but I definitely was drawn into the fictional world of Dupont. No one has claimed it to be fact and I enjoyed it for what it was.</p>
<p>My biggest problem with the book is it's weight!</p>
<p>It was a good fast read. An interesteing book. No one said it is a true story, it is a work of fiction. Depiciting the worst of college life. It takes many of the problems that happen to all freshman, and have them all occur in a short time frame.
It makes for very good vacation reading.</p>
<p>I just finished the book and found it enjoyable and probably closer to the truth than many people want to believe. The complaints about the students being one dimensional----how many dimensions do 18-21 year olds have? To me, it is a book about people trying to find their place in the world. And that is not an easy thing to do, in real life or in the book.</p>
<p>Take a peek at "Prep" by Curtis Sittenfeld. A bit more realistic and delves more into the mind of the girl. Probably because it is written by a young woman. But remarkably along the same lines.</p>
<p>Just finished Charlotte last night --- and I have to say that the ending was very disappointing. I enjoyed the book up until that point but the ending just didn't ring true to me, although it was satisfying to see Hoyt get his just deserts in the end. :)</p>
<p>Carolyn, you don't think the ending rings true for Charlotte?</p>
<p>Dstark, the ending made me feel like Charlotte sold out. I would have liked to see her just become confident in her own abilities, not because she needed to bask in the shadow of a man's success. But then again, the entire book implied that Charlotte could only find happiness if she found a man. :)</p>
<p>I agree. From reading the ending, she's not staying with JoJo. She's going through a phase. She's very aware of what she is doing.</p>
<p>I like Jojo. I hope she doesn't dump him!</p>
<p>Maybe it's just a phase, but I felt like she had had enough "phases" that involved relying on men! It would have been nice to see her realize that she really was strong enough to get by without relying on a man - to me, that would have been a more satisfying ending.</p>
<p>"The complaints about the students being one dimensional----how many dimensions do 18-21 year olds have? "</p>
<p>I haven't read the book yet, but I have to take issue with this question. Mine certainly are multi-dimensional.</p>
<p>Also, what this usually means is that characters are presented as stereotypes: the athlete, the scholar, the punk, etc. No one, at any age, is just a label. I've seen Wolfe do this in his other novels (recently read A Man in Full). The main character gets to be real, and a couple others maybe , but everyone else becomes cardboard foils who you don't have to care about. I agree he's immensely readable, and I have put in for Charlotte on reserve at the library, but I always feel at the end that characters too often become charicatures in his books.</p>
<p>Well Garland, this book isn't different than his others. This book isn't a great piece of literature. It is not going to have a long shelf life. But it is immensely readable for those who are interested in the social lives of college students. My guess is you are going to object to the characters, and your views of Wolfe as a writer are not going to be changed by this book.</p>
<p>Yeah, that's why I've decided I'll wait to get it frrom the library!</p>
<p>That's what I did.</p>
<p>Here's an excerpt from the Chronicle about how "Dupont" is like Duke in case you were wondering (and I'm sure you weren't):</p>
<p>Before Charlotte even reaches the Gothic campus, Wolfe describes the most identifiable Duke aspect of Dupont: that everybodys just plain-long wild about basketball!</p>
<p>One of the novels main characters is Jojo Johanssen, who bears a name and status strikingly similar to J.J. Redick as the lone white starter on the godlike basketball team. Head coach Buster Roth has a lucrative deal with Nike and an office that takes up the entire floor of one of the tallest buildings at Dupont, just as Mike Krzyzewski occupies the top level of the Schwartz-Butters Athletic Center. For the basketball players, Dupont knocked down a wall between two dorm rooms to increase living space, like the two-room triple in Dukes Basset Dormitory. Of course, to see the team play, seats run at $30,000 a pop.</p>
<p>Additionally, the campus setup evokes an image of the Gothic Wonderland. Charlotte lives on Little Yard, the campus that houses the 1,600 first-year students. Little Yard is separated by a tunnel to the upperclassman Great Yard (read: East to West Campus), where the Chapel-like tower at the library dominates as highest point on campus. Duponts pride is its library reading room, with prominent windows and ornate stone lobes and filigrees filled in with stained glass, evoking an image of the Gothic Reading Room. Just off campus, a strip of stores and restaurants on the edge of the slum attracts students, not unlike Ninth Street.</p>
<p>i think the end is quite ironic; who would expect the last line of a book called "I am Charlotte Simmons" to end with charlotte referred to as Jojo Johansen's girlfriend. in my opinion woolfe purposefully made the 'aw shucks the valiant knight got the girl' ending on purpose, i found it all very tongue in cheek.</p>