I just came across this CBS News review of a new novel written by Tom Wolfe (who also wrote such prominent novels as The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, etc.) entitled I Am Charlotte Simmons, which apparently takes a humorous and poignant look at the nature of sex and relationships among college undergrad students these days. As the article describes,

The essential pathology that Wolfe aims at from many angles is this: a promiscuity that precludes love. With lurid detail, he paints pictures of hormones revved up by the steroids of porn-lite pop culture; sex enhanced by anonymity and erased by any hint of romance; sex as consummation of coolness, of not deigning to be so geeky as to care or commit or show passion about anything; a narcissistic but whorish obsession with bodies and grooming by both sexes; girls who service men, who’ve ceded to men their ancient powers; the absence of any kind of idealism, morality, ambition, religion or romanticism that, in Western culture at least, sometimes preserved words like “soul” and “heart” and “love” from the omnipresent forces of lust, liquor, narcotics, status and cruelty.

Obviously, since I am married and only teach these undergrad students, I have no personal experience with the types of behaviors that Wolfe describes, but in conjunction with similar articles, stories, and descriptions that I’ve read or heard about, he is apparently right on the mark.

I could be wrong, but doesn’t this sound a lot like the “free love” movement back in the 1960s?