College Happenings

I am so jaded with the journalism school. Sitting in opinion class listening to the juniors reading their extremely wordy attempts to be witty is going to kill me. I can’t stand that flowery type of writing, the “please look at how smart I am and what big words I can use�? style is so over-done. Who reads shit like that?

Today we talked about our book reviews of the dreadful I Am Charlotte Simmons, by whom else but Tom Wolfe.

Pretty much everyone agreed that they didn’t like it. It is a look at college life through the eyes of an old guy. He apparently thinks a college student can’t carry on a conversation with out using the word “fuck�? at least twice.

The book centers around four main characters. Charlotte a brilliant and beautiful naïve girl from a small town, Jojo white power forward on a mostly black basketball team, Hoyt, your typical frat boy and Adam the nerd who is pissed because he is not cool.

So we’re supposed to write reviews on the book. Did it suck? What was the plot did you like it or not? Those types of questions. It was not supposed to be about how brilliant you think Tom Wolfe is.

The teacher calls on a few juniors to read. They’re papers all start out, “Tom Wolfe has shown his literary genius yet again as well as his sharp journalistic eye.�? They all mention the Bonfire of the Vanities, the Electric Cool-aid Acid test and some of his other works. One gets the feeling that they are well read especially where Wolfe is concerned. Then the teacher asks them, “have you read other stuff by Wolfe?�?

“Well, no, but….�?

Then why go on about him for five paragraphs, talk about the damn book. Gosh!

The book sucked, it was trite and predictable. There’s my review.