Tom Wolfe Comments On College Social Life

Author Tom Wolfe wowed a Lowell Lecture Hall audience Friday night with his insights on college social life, dating, fashion and, of course, the state of contemporary American literature.

Wolfe was at Harvard to receive the Author of the Year award from the Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine. The 'Poonsters inducted Wolfe as an honorary member and hosted him at a private dinner and party following the lecture.

The author of books including The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and most recently, A Man in Full, Wolfe is known for biting social satire.

Arriving in his trademark white suit, Wolfe began the lecture by surveying the audience's fashion sense.

"Dress standards could be improved," he quipped.

Looking at a young man wearing a sideways baseball cap he asked, "Did you mug some seven year-old?"

Wolfe is currently researching college life for his latest book, scheduled for publication in 2002. Using the "American university" as his subject, Wolfe hopes to capture an interesting subset of the country's culture.

"Universities have replaced the church as the place where values are established and created," he said.

Wolfe's field work for the book has included interviewing Stanford students and attending a fraternity party at the University of Michigan.

After observing the social life of today's college students, Wolfe concluded that the social mores of his own youth are obsolete.

"There used to be a custom for young men and women to meet. It was called dating," he said, adding that audience members were probably too young to remember this outmoded rite of passage.

Now, Wolfe said, dating has been replaced with what are popularly called "hook-ups."

He defined hooking up as "an elastic, sexual term" that can imply a acts of a wide spectrum.

According to Wolfe, meaningful relationships have been replaced with brief sexual encounters, in which a student may only know their partner as "the sketchy guy in the green Wu-Tang T-shirt."

After reading a passage from A Man in Full, Wolfe answered questions from the audience and offered a critique of modern American literature.

"The novel is really in trouble and all that is required for a comeback is for writers to face the challenge of what's around them," he said.

Wolfe described his own writing technique, which combines his prior experience as a reporter with his ability to amuse readers. He argued that most contemporary writers do not invest the effort and talent needed to effectively portray today's culture.

"It's the duty of every writer to first be a journalist and entertainer," Wolfe said. "We're in an era that is so rich, so full of material."

Many audience members were thrilled by Wolfe's presentation.

"Sometimes people are good writers and not great speakers. He's both," said Jennifer D. Rogers '01.

Lampoon staff member Danny Chun '02 remarked on Wolfe's openness in discussing college social life.

"It was surprising that he was so candid, but it was dead-on," he said.

Still, not everyone felt that Wolfe's observations accurately described Harvard culture, noting that the college is often criticized for its lackluster social life.

"The whole time I was thinking that if he is looking to do field research he's looking at the wrong university," said Lampoon vice-president Dave A. King '00.