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![[Audiobook]](/documents/reading_list/figures/audiobook.png)
Wolfe, Tom.
I Am Charlotte Simmons.
(Audiobook, Unabridged).
New York: Macmillan Audio, 2004.
ISBN 978-0-312-42444-2.
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Thomas
Sowell has written, “Each new generation born is in
effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who
must be civilized before it is too late”. Tom Wolfe's extensively
researched and pitch-perfect account of undergraduate life at an
élite U.S. college in the first decade of the twenty-first century
is a testament to what happens when the barbarians sneak into the
gates of the cloistered cities of academe, gain tenure, and then
turn the next generation of “little barbarians” loose
into a state of nature, to do what their hormones and whims tell
them to.
Our viewpoint into this alien world (which the children and grandchildren
of those likely to be reading this chronicle inhabit, if they're lucky
[?] enough to go to one of those élite institutions which
groom them for entry into the New [or, as it is coming to be called,
Ruling] Class at the cost of between a tenth and a quarter of a million
dollars, often front-end loaded as debt onto the lucky students just
emerging into those years otherwise best spent in accumulating capital
to buy a house, start a family, and make the key
early
year investments
in retirement and inheritance for their progeny) is Charlotte Simmons of
Sparta, North Carolina, a Presidential Scholar from the hill country who,
by sheer academic excellence, has won a full scholarship to Dupont
University, known not only for its academic prestige, but also its
formidable basketball team.
Before arriving at Dupont, Charlotte knew precisely who she was,
what she wanted, and where she was going. Within days after arriving,
she found herself in a bizarre mirror universe where everything she
valued (and which the university purported to embody) was mocked by
the behaviour of the students, professors, and administrators.
Her discoveries are our discoveries of this alien culture which is
producing those who will decide our fate in our old age. Worry!
Nobody remotely competes with Tom Wolfe when it
comes to imbibing an alien culture, mastering its jargon and
patois, and fleshing out the characters who inhabit it.
Wolfe's talents are in full ascendance here, and this is a masterpiece
of contemporary pedagogic anthropathology. We are doomed!
The audio programme is distributed in four files, running
31 hours and 16 minutes and includes a brief interview
with the author at the end.
An Audio CD edition is available,
as is a paperback print edition.
October 2010 