Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have read and enjoyed a lot of Tom Wolfe's work, especially "Bonfire of the Vanities", and I agree wholeheartedly with his argument that American literature needs to explore more deeply the richness and complexity of our culture (as opposed to navel-gazing). But "I am Charlotte Simmons" certainly isn't that kind of novel. It's overly long and painfully simplistic, and it sounds and feels like an easily shocked old man writing about those AWFUL young people nowadays....which sadly, is pretty much the sum total of it. To some extent, "Charlotte Simmons" is Mr. Wolfe's sincere attempt to write in the voice of an 18 year old girl (when he himself is a 74 year old man). Certainly this could theoretically be done, but it just does not come off here. Mr. Wolfe just has no grasp on what it's like to be a woman, let alone a teenager in the early 21st century. He gets a lot of the sublte little details wrong -- college freshman who listen to Britney Spears? -- but mostly he just doesn't understand the inner workings of the female mind. This novel would make more sense set in the 1950s, a period that Tom Wolfe probably knows a whole lot better. The plot is centered around Charlotte losing her virginity, a hopelessly quaint theme for a book...it reminded me of Herman Wouk's "Marjorie Morningstar", with it's old-fashioned concepts of virginity vs. sophistication. (BTW: dear readers, this event doesn't occur until 500 plus pages into the book.) This is just painfully out of touch with the realities of the present day -- most studies show that girls lose their virginity in their mid-teens. The "hooking up" that Mr. Wolfe describes with such horrified fascination is only a shocking phenonema in junior high school....it's standard operating procedure every place else. He also has some loony, New York sophisticates idea of what life might be like in a small town in Rural Red State USA (Charlotte is from Sparta, North Carolina). Apparently, Mr. Wolfe doesn't realize that even the smallest burg in podunkiest state has television, MTV, movies (like, say "American Pie" or "There's Something about Mary"), fashion/gossip/advice magazines and so on. For better or worse, there is no one anymore who is this naive and unworldly. I finished reading this with a profound sense of embarassment for the author. There is nothing sadder than seeing someone with the great talent and abilities of Tom Wolfe reduced to writing this kind of hyperbolic twaddle.