Charlotte Simmons is a smart, modest, and naïve girl from a simple family, a perfect straight-A student from a tiny town. Once she lands at one of the most elite universities in the United States, she is shocked to discover that the interests of most students boil down to sex, drinking, the desire to look “cool,” “let loose,” and “party up”—not studying and learning about the world, which has so much interesting in it.
To write this novel, Tom Wolfe spent nearly four years specifically in college campuses. The world he saw there he brought to paper.