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Tom Wolfe is no stranger to spinning a good yarn, and he does so here with his usual powerful use of point of view to portray characters' mentality and philosophy, as well as action. If Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mindwere turned into fiction, this would be it. And I mean complete with critiques of modern music, feminism, and etc.
Wolfe portrays characters who are rich, multifaceted, intelligent, motivated, etc., who managed to get into a top (notional) Ivy League school. They then exert every ounce of energy to turn themselves into two-dimensional caricatures and ensure nobody thinks they are very intelligent or striving too hard to succeed. They spend most of their time and energy back-biting one another or dragging each other done, when they aren't busy using one another for casual sex or other anti-social behavior.
Enter the story's protagonist, who is an intelligent striver from a poor family in the backwoods. She is completely unaware of all the social (anti-)niceties in play among her peers, and subject to a freshman year of culture shock. Wolfe uses her point of view for the most black-and-white critique of "kids these days" and what is wrong with culture (if one could call it that) among young adults. However, some of Wolfe's more penetrating presentation comes from the POVs of the supporting characters, those who are themselves caught up in it all already, as they struggle with the perceived need to dumb themselves down and conform to an Abilene-syndrome-gone-wild set of social expectations. My only disappointment here was that all of his chosen POVs were from white or Jewish characters; basketball player Charles B. was a rich, interesting character Wolfe could have chosen to expand this a bit. Or wasn't Wolfe confident enough he could pull off a convincing black point of view?
Also, his critique of the over-sexualized youth culture comes off a lot like an old fella complaining about "kids these days." He would have had a more powerfully-communicated message had he taken a cue from the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. For the most part, all of the self-destructive behavior engaged in seems to have no real lasting consequences. Poor old Hoyt worries he'll be jobless owing to his bad grades stemming from his non-stop partying and sex with ladies whose names he never even bothers to learn. Apart from that, everybody seems fine consuming all the drugs, alcohol, having all the mindless sex, and blowing off their academics each and every day. Had Wolfe played out some consequences--pregnancy, abortion, STDs, alcohol poisoning, overdoses, getting thrown out of school, etc., for more of the minor characters, there would have been believable lessons built into the plot.
And I'd say Wolfe gets the female perspective on sex mostly wrong. While he seems to have delved into the minds of groupies a bit, and made that plausible, for the more work-a-day casual sex, he has the young women merely mirror-imaging the young men in their sexual motivations and behavior, which may seemingly support the strange psychological theories Wolfe tries to peddle (cat-see, cat-do, if you read the very end). Seeing as it does not conform to my anecdotal observations in this area, nor probably with very many other people's, I don't imagine he "proves" anything with this sort of "support" that runs counter to common experience.
Anyway, it's a provocative read and a perhaps lighter, more enjoyable way to receive a similar (though less profound) message found in the Closing of the American Mind. The foul language is heavy (on purpose), and the sex and sexual references frequent and graphic, if often-times in overly technical language. Definitely a good read, but not really up to the level I expected, both from the controversy it stirred at its publication, and from the level that Wolfe has written elsewhere.