I Am Charlotte Simmons

Vos Saluto

Many generous people helped me gather information for this book: college students, athletes, coaches, faculty, alumni, outriders, and citizens of an Eden in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Alleghany County. If it were possible, I would thank each and every one personally in these lines. I must certainly acknowledge a few who went far out of their way on my behalf:

In Alleghany County: MACK and CATHY NICHOLS, whose understanding and eye for details were superb; LEWIS and PATSY GASKINS, who showed me the county’s extraordinary Christmas-tree farms, one of which was raising 500,000 trees; and the gracious staffs of ALLEGHANY HIGH SCHOOL and the ALLEGHANY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.

At Stanford University: media studies chieftain TED GLASSER; JIM STEYER, author of The Other Parent; comparative literature savant GERALD GILLESPIE; Mallarmé scholar ROBERT COHN; young academic stars ARI SOLOMON and ROBERT ROYALTY and their student entourages.

At the University of Michigan: communication studies maestro MIKE TRAUGOTT; and PEACHES THOMAS, who enabled a fool to rush into undergraduate nightlife where wise men never went.

At Chapel Hill: CONNIE EBLE, lexicologist of college slang and author of Slang and Sociability; DOROTHY HOLLAND, whose Educated in Romance blazed a trail in the anthropology of American college students; JANE D. BROWN of Media, Sex and the Adolescent fame; and two especially insightful students, alumni FRANCES FENNEBRESQUE and DAVID FLEMING.

In Huntsville, Alabama: MARK NOBLE, the sports consultant famous for assessing, training, and healing Division I and professional athletes; GREG and JAY STOLT, and GREG JR., University of Florida basketball star now playing professionally in Japan; and Huntsville’s colorful counselor DOUG MARTINSON.

At Florida, in Gainesville: BILL MCKEEN, journalism chairman, author of Highway 61, and a man with entrée to hot spots of undergraduate life, including “the Swamp,” a football stadium with a city throbbing beneath the grandstands.

In New York: JANN WENNER, who once again walked me through the valley of the shadow of weary writing; and COUNSELOR EDDIE (“Get me Hayes!”) HAYES, who read much of the manuscript.

In domo: My dear SHEILA, “scribere iussit amor,” as Ovid put it. Scripsi.

—Tom Wolfe