I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

"Caricature in words" is what Tom Wolfe renders to the reader. The characters are always bigger than real life yet believable. They are always exaggerated yet they are real. They always tell us something about life.

Anyone who has been to college as an adolescent and paid any attention to the social surroundings recognizes at least some of the people in these pages. You'll also remember the rituals... and at least some of the lessons learned.

Some excerpts. On college sports:

"...What is it with this sports mania in the first place? Why does anybody get excited because Dupont is gonna play Indiana in basketball? Either our hired mercenaries will beat their hired mercenaries, or vice versa. Why does anybody care? It's a game between two groups of guys who have no connection with our lives whatsoever, and even if they did, it's only a game! Why does a game get students so emotionally involved? Or anybody else for that matter. What does it mean to them? I don't see how it could mean anything, but obviously it does. It's a mystery. It's completely irrational."

On the Coach and the College President:

But [the President] could only do so gingerly, with his own job in his hands - because there was one thing he couldn't do. He couldn't fire [the Coach]. Only the board of trustees could do that-and they could also fire the President.

On coeds:

The groupies pranced forward, pretty white girls whose faces, had they chosen to leave them unpainted, could have been those of the sweetest, most dedicated day-care-center volunteers. As it was, their eyes shone from way down in Night Life black occipital craters. Their eyelids bore cantilevered store-bought lashes, their lips gleamed with an astonishing range of hues, the waists of their jeans were below the tops of their hip joints, and the jeans were so tight, their belly buttons so conspicuously pierced with silver rings from which hung a short string or two of pearls. . . that they looked like hookers.

On language:

...Shit Patois. Charlotte had been aware of Fuck Patois from the day she arrived at Dupont, but it was not until spending hour after hour after hour cooped up in this SUV that she realized how cool it apparently was to use shit in every way possible: to mean possessions ("Where's your shit?"), lies or misleading explanations ("Are you shitting me?" "We need a shit detector"), drunk ("shit-faced"), trouble ("in deep shit"), ineptitude ("couldn't play point guard for shit"), care about ("give a shit"), rude, thoughtless, disloyal ("really shitty thing to do"), not kidding ("no shit?"), obnoxiously unpleasant ("he's a real shit"), mindless conversation ("talking shit," "shooting the shit"), confusing story ("or some such shit"), drugs ("you bring the shit?"), to egest ("take a shit"), to fart in such a way that it becomes partly egestion ("shart"), a trivial matter ("a piece a shit"), unpleasantly surprised ("he about shit a brick"), ignorance ("he don't know shit"), pompous man ("the big shit," "that shitcake"), hopeless situation ("up Shit Creek"), disappointment ("oh, shit!"), startling ("holy shit!"), unacceptable, inedible ("shit on a shingle"), strategy ("oh, that shit again"), feces, literally ("shit"), slum ("some shithook neighborhood"), meaningless ("that don't mean shit"), et cetera ("and massages and shit"), self-important ("he thinks he's some shit"), predictably ("sure as shit"), very ("mean as shit"), verbal abuse ("gave me shit"), violence ("before the shit came down" or "hit the fan," "don't start no shit," "won't be no shit"). Still, they didn't neglect Fuck Patois...

This is a great book. Classic Tom Wolfe. A good read.