Sexually charged Wolfe novel skips title on paperback cover

Tom Wolfe's 'I am Charlotte Simmons' is aimed at a younger market. Picture / Herald file

LOS ANGELES - In an unusual publishing move, Tom Wolfe's most-recent novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons," will be printed without the title on the cover of its paperback edition -- just its author's name in giant letters.

The paperback cover of the sexually charged tale of contemporary US college life contains only Wolfe's name and a picture of a young woman in a green dress, presumably to symbolize Charlotte Simmons.

"We are using Tom Wolfe's name as a brand, rather than the title of the book. He is an icon himself," said Tanya Farrell, publicity director for Picador USA, which is printing more than 2 million copies of the 738-page novel in which the 74-year-old writer tries to infiltrate the minds of American college students.

The back cover contains reviews of the book but doesn't name the novel, although the name is available on the page following the cover.

The book sold more than 775,000 copies in hardcover, making it the 11th bestselling novel of 2004, but critics gave it mixed reviews and wondered why the author of the celebrated "Bonfire of the Vanities" and "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" could not find adults to write about.

"Whoever missed the book the first time around should know that Wolfe has written for a new demographic," Farrell said, adding that Picador had hired an outside firm to help market the book to college students.

For his part, Wolfe is giving interviews to college newspapers and doing joint readings with Toure, a 34-year-old writer who once worked for MTV and is idolized by college-age readers.

"As a paperback house, you try to reinvent the book because at a lower price, you have a different audience so you are bound to find new ways to get the book into audience hands," Farrell said.

Wolfe, a pioneer of the style that came to be known as the "New Journalism," is also the author of "The Right Stuff," about the early US space program.

- REUTERS