Word: duponts
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TALKIES MAY HAVE made them obsolete, but silent films went out in style, as this 1929 drama from German director E.A. Dupont proves. It's the All About Eve fable, with an exotic youngster (Anna May Wong) replacing an older star (Gilda Gray). Wong, the one Chinese-American movie star in Holly-wood's first half-century, exudes the toxic perfume of sexual danger and makes every woman around her (including Gray, the ostensible star) look frowsy. Like Wong, this terrific movie still has heat and a hard luster...
...novel depicts life at Dupont University (think Ivy-League but with sports), an elite institution in Pennsylvania, for four very different undergraduates and a sprinkling of adults for unsubtle contrast. As with most of Wolfe’s novels there is a host of characters, but four comprise the novel’s main focus: Charlotte Simmons, the naïve and beautiful titular protagonist; Hoyt Thorpe, the self-obsessed fratboy; “Jojo” Johanssen, the gargantuan whitey baller; and Adam Gellin, Nerd...
Needless to say, Charlotte’s introduction to Dupont is a rude awakening. Her waif-lush roommate Beverly Amory, a Groton girl, makes a lifestyle out of drinking and chasing Lacrosse players, and frequently “sexiles” Charlotte (a term, like many bits of slang—including “hooking up,” “getting crunked,” and “grinding” Wolfe delights in establishing his knowledge of). Charlotte’s academic pursuits initially suffer setbacks as well, as when she takes a class...
...exactly, is Charlotte Simmons? Wolfe's heroine is a freshman at prestigious, fictional Dupont University in Philadelphia. They don't come much fresher than Charlotte. A native of tiny, remote Sparta, N.C., the brilliant, virginal Charlotte arrives at Dupont full of dewy ambition, expecting to live "a life of the mind." Instead, she encounters charming, predatory frat boys like the handsome Hoyt Thorpe; jock demigods like basketball star Jojo Johanssen; and icy prep-school snobs like her roommate, the bitchy Groton grad Beverly. Instead of an ivory tower, she finds a status-obsessed, intellectually bankrupt sexual romper room. Will...
...Charlotte Simmons isn't like Wolfe's other novels. For one thing, he sticks largely to one setting, the Dupont campus--he's not doing his city-hopping, class-transcending billion-footed-beast act, which is impressive but gave his earlier books a certain overstuffed lumpiness. Charlotte Simmons adheres more to the Aristotelian unities--time, place and action--and thus hangs together more neatly. It's a much more personal novel than the earlier ones. Not unlike Wolfe, Charlotte is a permanent outsider, a lonely observer. Wolfe's books are usually more about setting than character, but Charlotte's delicately...