" I was given this book as a booby prize after seeking, perhaps quixotically, to defend The Lord of the Rings before a crowd of Derridastic metropolitan chatterati at LSE. You know, the kind of Guardianistas who think that everyone is entitled to a view, as long as it's theirs. The reason was that the literati were in postmodernist paroxysms about the supposedly very bad sex scenes in this book. Well, they're not quite as bad as all that, although the frequent conjunction of the words "loamy" and "loins" does not dispose anyone to tumid concupiscence ("Con-cu-pi-huh? Did I spell that right? Aw, muthafucka!") so much as mirth and merriment. My problems with this book were larger (unghh! unghh!) Not (knowingly) having read any Tom Wolfe before, I was left wondering whether this was meant to be a serious (or, at least Dickensian) novel about college life, or a knockabout romp. The girl in the title is the unfeasibly straight and squeaky-clean academic superstar from Hicksville High who lands a scholarship to Ivy-League Dupont College. Once there she is surprised and mortified to learn that college life is, amazingly, not often lived on the higher plane to which she aspires. Whisper it soft, but students drink, bunk classes, fuck, fart, tell dirty jokes, fuck, bunk more classes, fuck, indulge in varied gradations of social snobbery, go to basketball games -- and did I mention fuck? Well, lawdy hush mah mouth. And by the way, the language in this book would make any Momma reach for the carbolic. Ms Simmons' loneliness makes you wanna scream -- why don't you join a church group, like anyone else in your situation would do, rather than mope and moan for page upon page? But if she did anything this logical, her alienation would disappear and there'd be no story. Even though the book picks up two-thirds of the way through, after Ms Simmons' brutal deflowering by finely chiseled frat-boy Hoyt Thorpe (anyone mention Animal House?) and her subsequent, well-handled if prolix depression -- it still takes Mr Wolfe 600 pages to make the same point that Tom Lehrer established in just fifteen deft words, in his song Bright College Days: "Hearts full of youth! Hearts full of truth! Six parts gin to one part vermouth!" "
— Henry, 2/3/2014