Tom Wolfe’s latest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, is infecting the zeitgeist. While few folks in the Gallatin Valley are likely to read the book, its theme is permeating our culture. Hence, it may ruin the holidays for parents of high school seniors and those whose freshmen are returning from college. Consider my review a palliative to promote peace on hearth.

I fear folks may confuse this fiction with Wolfe’s journalism. His journalistic craftsmanship, while highly idiosyncratic, is unsurpassed. He is as thorough as Jim Fallows, funny as David Brooks, piercing as Michael Kelly, and catholic as Geoffrey Norman. Wolfe’s “Radical Chic” (available with another classic, “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers”) is among my all-time favorite essays. I really respect Wolfe’s intelligence, insights, intuition, and empathic understanding of the way the world works.

Now, back to Charlotte. Unless you are a Wolfe devotee who has logged at least 1,500 pages, e.g., The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test plus The Right Stuff plus “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!”, DON’T BUY THIS BOOK!

If you’ve read a review of Charlotte and have some vague idea that it’s about a girl from a small town who goes off to a top school, and think, “Oh, my friends Ted and Alice are sending little Heather off to (fill in any “mainstream” school from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute book, Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America’s Top Schools) and I’m sure they’ll appreciate this book,” STOP NOW!

(Unless, of course, you actually hate Ted and Alice because 20 years ago Ted left your close friend Mary who never really recovered but became a NOLS instructor in Lander, Wyoming and now lives in a yurt in Vermont and raises heritage vegetables, which she sells at farmers’ markets and, and -- you get the idea.)

Give it for Christmas if and only if you:

1) really want to punish someone whose kid is admitted to any top school, or

2) promote shrinks, or

3) are casually sadistic.

I counsel mercy. You shouldn’t impose this much additional stress on an inherently difficult step on the ramp of responsible parenthood. There is no need to amplify parental anxiety. And Charlotte will do it. Here’s why.

Wolfe creates a fictional school, Dupont University. It is an amalgam of UNC, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. Charlotte comes from a devout, lower-working-class family. She graduated from a remote high school in the mountains of western North Carolina, Junior Johnson’s home territory. Charlotte is extremely talented, worked hard, had a strong mentor, and scored a perfect 1600 SAT.

She earned a scholarship to Dupont and enrolled expecting to experience “the life of the mind.” Dupont’s student culture subverted her goal. Most female students were rich, spoiled, slutty, and utterly mad to hook up with boys. The boys with whom women “hook up” determine status. Debauchery reigns. The boys are opportunistic, nihilistic sexual predators who find gaggles of easy, even aggressive marks.

In Wolfe’s world, students are divided into cliques or castes: the cool Greeks, the pampered jocks, and the nerds. Within each group, as within wolf packs, there is a relentless status battle. Ever more miserable, Charlotte slogs among them and becomes painfully depressed. She violates her upbringing in seeking acceptance.

In her first semester, the chasm between her ideals and her experiences at Dupont U fosters disillusionment, shame, and an occasional shining, fleeting moment of glory. At Christmas she struggles to hide her moral and academic downfall from her loving parents and mentor.

What sensible parent would send a child into this caldron of license and liberation from propriety?

Actually, the story is a 676-page cartoon of undergraduate college life. And like most cartoons, features are grossly exaggerated. Yes, these activities exist at Dupont, and the status scramble is a central motivator within each group. The tale, however, is a caricature of sexual dynamics.

Parents, please relax. It’s not as bad as Wolfe reports. This is his latest novel, not his best journalism. Parents can take solace in Wolfe’s literary demonstration that time wounds all heels. As in his other novels, bad characters get just deserts. Here’s Charlotte’s take-home message for the holidays: Children need sound values to recover from the temptations of college life.