Just finished Tom Wolfe’s most recent book, “I Am Charlotte Simmons”.
At heart, all of Wolfe’s books are about the same thing: powerful men falling from grace — Sherman of “Bonfire of the Vanities” or Charlie Croker of “A Man In Full”. In each case they find redemption; maybe partial, but redemption none the less.
“I Am Charlotte Simmons” diverges, though, in that the powerful men of the beginning find total redemption; they end up right where they started. Maybe they’ve learned humility, but beyond that, there really isn’t anything. The little guys, meanwhile, the ones who were looked down upon when the story opens, fail to gain any ground. Sure, they had a moment in the sun, but the moment fades without anything coming of it.
I have a theory about this: Wolfe got tired of writing the same book over and over and over again, and tried to switch up the formula a little bit. By trying a female character as the center of the plot, he thought he could make something original of a cliched storyline. But Wolfe doesn’t write about women; he never has, and he probably won’t, unless something clicks very soon. Try though he may, he can’t figure out how to center a book around a female character. And the energy that goes into the attempt undermines his ability to have the male characters actually grow.
Wolfe’s ability to see the world around him is as sharp as ever, and “I Am Charlotte Simmons” is worth the read for that reason alone. But don’t expect to be satisfied when it ends.