I am Tom Wolfe

Subtitle: Author of a bloated, morally bankrupt waste of time entitled "I am Charlotte Simmons."

I just finished Tom Wolfe's latest, an 800 page diatribe against the moral weaknesses and self-centered nature of my generation. It was not a pleasant experience.

First off, the story just ain't that great. He's much more interested in exposing the realism of college life and 18-22 year old partying than he is in establishing dramatic tension. Things don't really get worrisome for the key players until we're 7/8ths through the novel. So unless you need someone to hold your hand through 700 pages of his expose on debauchery there's nothing compelling you to pick up the book.

But it also fails because the characters are all almost completely flawed, which isn't necessarily that bad, but the moral reckoning that does come for one of them doesn't feel genuine or important...it just feels random. He (the character who does lose something) suffers because of his self-idolatry but so too could have the 3 other vain characters who escape relatively unscathed. And how damning of my generation is it supposed to be that each character Wolfe creates from my demographic is completely self-absorbed, maniacal, devious, and only motivated by talking about or doing something completely for him or herself? There's no charity to be found in any of them.

Review over. Now let me post this on my blog.

Irony defined.