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Ken Masugi- Columnist
 Ken Masugi is the Director of the Claremont Institute's Center
for Local Government.
Its purpose is to apply the principles of the American Founding
to the theory and practice of local government, the cradle
of American self-government. Dr. Masugi has extensive experience
in government and academia. Following his initial appointment
at the Claremont Institute (1982-86), he was a special assistant
to then-Chairman Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission. After his years in Washington, he
held visiting university appointments including Olin Distinguished
Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Dr. Masugi
is co-author with Brian Janiskee of both The
California Republic: Institutions, Statesmanship, and Policies (Rowman & Littlefield,
2004) and Democracy
in California: Politics and Government in the Golden State (Rowman & Littlefield,
2002). He is co-editor of six books on political thought,
including The
Supreme Court and American Constitutionalism with
Branford P. Wilson, (Ashbrook Series, 1997); The
Ambiguous Legacy of the Enlightenment with William Rusher,
(University Press, 1995); The
American Founding with J. Jackson Barlow
and Leonard W. Levy, (Greenwood Press, 1988). He is the editor
of Interpreting
Tocqueville's Democracy in America, (Rowman & Littlefield,
1991). [go
to Masugi index]
 Tom
Wolfe's Struggle With God and the Greeks
A review of I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe...
[Ken Masugi] 12/31/04
By Ken Masugi
Posted December 22, 2004
This is an ugly book, but it could have been even uglier, being
as it is a book about the life of the mind. And protagonist
Charlotte Simmons of Sparta, North Carolina is scarcely an
heroic figure. Prized by her protective family and a determined
teacher, Charlotte becomes an outstanding student—admitted
with full scholarship to Dupont University (a fictitious Ivy
League school with a Georgetown or Duke-level basketball team).
She is a freshman version of Sherman McCoy of Bonfire of the
Vanities, the would-be Master of the Universe. That she winds
up being a victim is the key to understanding what Wolfe is
up to: The clash of Greek morality (Sparta) and Greek philosophy
(Dupont)—each represented weakly, I emphasize—is
the theme of the novel. The life of the mind requires a new
type of politics to defend it, which is terribly missing but
nonetheless hinted at.
With her heavy accent
and Southern, rural upbringing Charlotte might be thought an
evangelical Christian. What is striking is
that we fail to see Charlotte attending chapel, discussing religion,
or praying—except late in the book when at home for Christmas
break, she prays for her death. In fact, she was always ashamed
of her family and her origins. Her glitzy (and trashy roommate)
merely clarifies what she had felt before setting foot on Dupont's
vaunted grounds. She even grows to disdain the spinster high
school teacher who poured her being into Charlotte's thirsty
intellect. What primarily explains Charlotte is her concern for
her persona. Do they think her a snob, as she delivers her high
school commencement address? Will they mock my accent, as she
anxiously contemplates contributing a point to class discussion?
Will he think me a hillbilly unworthy of the "coolest guy
in the coolest fraternity," as she is being ravished? Charlotte
is far more in love with her reputation than with what is truly
good for her soul. To a great extent that concern is for a good
reputation, but her vanity is sufficient for her to cast over
all self-respect. She is a much better person when she is blunt.
To the extent that her conduct might be described as virtuous,
it is compromised, because she takes no pleasure in it; "virtue" as
she knows it makes her miserable. She craves acceptance and looks
for any rationalization to get it. Though apparently untouched
by feminism, she is open to the idea (that of a former high school
classmate, one who has actually "gone all the way")
of making college an experiment without risks. Thus, her literally
idiotic mantra, when faced with the perplexity of college life,
is "I am Charlotte Simmons." (She omits her plainspoken
mother's addition: "and I don't hold with thangs like 'at.")
But separated from Sparta and her mother her soul is rather an
open city.
In the polis of Dupont
Charlotte's soul is confronted for good and ill by three students—Adam, an academically ambitious
nerd and school newspaper reporter; Jo-Jo, the sole white star
of the basketball team; and Hoyt, the seducing senior Big Man
on Campus. From Adam, she gains a feeling of academic exhilaration
she had been seeking. He introduces her to his discussion group,
the Mutants, in fact a bunch of losers who make Sinclair Lewis's
Thanatopsis Society of Gopher Prairie sound like a Straussian
seminar. Adam wants the academic prestige his newspaper reporting,
work in Africa, and class performance will yield him. And he
wants to use his intellectual musings—to seduce Charlotte.
Jo-Jo came to Dupont only to play basketball, but upbraided by
Charlotte he begins to question his life purposes. His classes
are rocks for jocks, and tutors write his papers anyway. It turns
out he needs Charlotte to save himself from expulsion. Despite
their shortcomings, let alone hers, Charlotte improves the character
of Adam and Jo-Jo. The scenes involving Hoyt and his fraternity,
with obscenities and vulgarities streaming, are as painful as
hitting your head repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer. They are
the farthest thing from the Christian martyr who fought Islam,
St. Raymond Nonnatus, whom their fraternity honors in name. Hoyt,
like many others at Dupont, know their admission into the school
means they have already attained a level only others could dream
of. (These graduates will be the foul-mouthed Wall Street traders
at the beginning of Bonfire.) The three men of mind, spirit,
and desire comprise a kind of caricature of Socrates' tripartite
soul, in the Republic. They in turn reflect a greater whole,
also noted by Wolfe--the stupidity, cowardice, and moral corruption
of the modern university.
The faculty are wizened versions of the students. If they do
the right thing, it is for the wrong reason (as is true of many
of so many of Wolfe's characters). Even freshman Charlotte catches
on to the superficiality of her teachers. In a neurophysiology
course she boldly offers a critique of Darwin, which wins praise
from her Pulitzer Prize-winning professor. She is elated. But
the point of the course she is so caught up in is that all intellectual
achievement and indeed all life is a neurophysiological illusion.
In such a cynical atmosphere, where students think they have
it made and spend their time drinking, partying, masturbating,
and fornicating; athletes pretend to be students; and professors
teach nihilism, reality is indeed uprooted. No wonder Charlotte
lost her bearings: Both campus experience and the classroom subvert
what moral and intellectual foundations she had.
If I am a tough on
Charlotte, it is because I expected greater things of her.
But Wolfe has his own intentions with her, and
he fulfills them magnificently. Everyone associated with a university
or seeking to be associated should read this novel, as should
everyone considering a donation to a university. I initially
thought Charlotte would be a student version of Charlie Croker,
the manly hero of A Man in Full, and in a way she is. As valiant
a high school teacher she had, when she poured her being into
Charlotte her virtue was insufficient. Without a grounding more
solid than Charlotte possessed, what virtue she had was readily
destroyed. (I take this to be Wolfe's response to Allan Bloom's
still immensely useful critique of the university, The Closing
of the American Mind, which praised the '50s elite university
too highly.) As Aristotle notes at the end of the Ethics, even
the best family needs politics to protect its virtue. And politics
is not a topic of discussion, let alone serious discussion, at
Dupont. The dregs of the '60s and the sexualized politics of
the '0s are what we see. Post-modernism (with its levels of sarcasm)
is as it were a natural development in student souls. Hoyt's
St. Ray fraternity's break-up of a gay rights demonstration epitomizes
the lack of political seriousness. There are significant parallels
that explain more about Wolfe's purposes. Charlotte is as conventional
as the 1950s she appears to reflect, in mores and even clothing.
When the '50s confront the '0s, the '50s lose, much as the Just
Logos is defeated by the slick-talking Unjust Logos in Aristophanes'
Clouds. Charlotte wants a man, but she is fickle and uncertain.
She will get the right man when she discards pretense and discusses
Socrates. Charlie has his women, but he will become a "man
in full" only through his conversion to Greek philosophy
of a particular kind. Charlie becomes an evangelist for Stoicism.
Charlotte's life, by comparison, is transformed by Socrates or
at any rate by her use of Socrates. Her urging Jo-Jo to take
a course on Plato seemed initially to be a disaster but proves
to be transformative for both of them.
For all his brilliance at portraying contemporary life, Wolfe
approaches and then veers away from confronting the most important
human questions, explored most profoundly by the Bible and Greek
philosophy. May his next novel take the mean between Socrates
and Stoicism and discover Aristotle. And may that be his opening
to the Bible and an even greater flourishing of his mind. tOR
copyright 2004 Claremont
Institute.
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