i am getting annoyed
More proof that this blog is more for me than it is for you, an update on my quest to finish I Am Charlotte Simmons without throwing it across the room. Warning: spoilers.
First, am I completely insane, or is the major conflict in the novel turning out to not involve the protagonist at all? 700+ pages of drama, all leading up to a show down over academic integrity between a basketball player and a self-important, bookish freak? Wolfe better bring Charlotte into the middle of this conflict in the last 100 pages, or I’m gonna be pissed.
Second, if that drama doesn’t involve Charlotte in some significant way, that means that the entire story arc of the novel hinges on a drunken first time? If so, that’s insane. Wolfe didn’t spend enough time in the front two-thirds of the book setting up Charlotte’s character to have that scene have as much of an impact as it is…turning her into a mute on Christmas break, and a blubbering idiot when she returns to school. She is Charlotte Simmons! Isn’t she?
Finally, I have a feeling that he’s going to try to pull all of this together in the last part of the book with the “governor of California” plotline that’s been lying around since Chapter 1. Unfortunately, it’s just been lying around, not going anywhere. There’s just no room in that part of the story for any flexibility: if that becomes the lynch pin of the book (bringing Hoyt, Vance, Adam, Jojo and Charlotte together into some paroxysm of plot), it just won’t hold.
I’m still gonna finish the damn thing. Just so when I get to the end of the book, I can throw it across the room.