RIP Tom Wolfe
Writer Tom Wolfe has died at 88.
Reading a lot of commentary around the web, I notice that Wolfe was a deeply meaningful writer to a great many people, some of whom say he changed their lives. I have to be honest and say that the Tom Wolfe phenomenon passed me right by; I don’t think I’ve ever read a full-length work of his, just some of his articles. I may have to remedy that failing of mine.
So that doesn’t make me the best person to eulogize Wolfe. I have long been aware of him, however, and his influence. Radical chic? Wolfe coined the phrase, and it stuck. The Me Decade, likewise. He had a way with words, Wolfe did.
Here’s an article from 2015 that sheds some light on what made Wolfe Wolfe:
[Wolfe] doesn’t use his new experience of East Coast sophisticates to distance himself from his southern conservative upbringing; instead he uses his upbringing to distance himself from the new experience…
He’d gone to Yale with the thought he would study his country by reading its literature and history and economics. He wound up discovering sociology””and especially Max Weber’s writings about the power of status seeking. The lust for status, it seemed to him, explained why otherwise intelligent American writers lost their minds and competed with one another to see just how devoted to the Communist cause they could be. In a funny way, Yale [where his professors rejected the first version of his dissertation as being too critical of Communist-friendly writers] served him extremely well: it gave him a chance to roam and read and bump into new ideas. But he didn’t immediately see that:
These stupid fucks have turned down namely my dissertation, meaning I will have to stay here about a month longer to delete all the offensive passages and retype the sumitch. They called my brilliant manuscript ”˜journalistic’ and ”˜reactionary,’ which means I must go through with a blue pencil and strike out all the laughs and anti-Red passages and slip in a little liberal merde, so to speak, just to sweeten it. I’ll discuss with you how stupid all these stupid fucks are when I see you. [T.W., aged 26, letter to a friend, June 9, 1956.]
After Yale, Wolfe no longer felt the need to “slip in a little liberal merde.” He’d had enough for a lifetime—a long and productive lifetime, as it turns out.
Another thing that would be almost impossible to miss was Wolfe’s sartorial signature, the white suit. It made him stand out, which I assume was the goal. It gave a fourfold message: here was a person who was unique, Southern, conservative, and bold, all at the same time.
RIP, Tom Wolfe:
[NOTE: Here’s the original “Radical Chic” article by Wolfe, published in New York magazine.]
Although I have not read everything TW wrote, I have enjoyed every book or article that I have read. His ability to persist in the environment where he plied his trade was commendable.
RIP
Parker,
Amen to that.
About Wolfe’s white suits — John Podhoretz thinks maybe he wore them to say to the New Yorkers he caricatured, “Whatever I am, I am not one of you.”
Tom Wolfe wasn’t life changing for me, but I’ve enjoyed his work, especially “The Right Stuff,” “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” and “Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.” At times, in some of his other novels, I’ve been disappointed in the ending.
When my daughter was in high school, she had an assignment to read something by Tom Wolfe and asked to borrow one of my books. I asked her which Tom Wolfe she was supposed to read and she looked at me as if I was deranged. As it turned out, it was the other Tom Wolfe she was supposed to read.
[NOTE: Here’s the original “Radical Chic” article by Wolfe, published in New York magazine.]
From Nieman Storyboard: Annotation Tuesday! Tom Wolfe and radical chic, we have Radical Chic plus Tom Wolfe answering questions about the article.
The article follows, plus Tom Wolfe’s answers to the questions.
Tom Wolfe was the only “serious” literary writer I could read in the 21st Century. All of his books made the cut when I moved.
I loved his “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast” advice for writers to go out into the vast, teeming mosaic of subcultured America and write about that instead of the intense, leftie navel-gazing which characterizes contemporary literature.
That was Tom Wolfe’s beat. He walked it beautifully and prodigiously.
Farewell.
Tom Wolfe was real, not fake as the term is now.
“The Post’s city editor was “amazed that Wolfe preferred cityside to Capitol Hill, the beat every reporter wanted.”
He wanted to see real people and he wrote about them.
I read “Bonfire of the Vanities” a few years before I had occasion to testify as a witness in Bronx Supreme Court, the setting for the court scenes in the novel. It was exactly as he described it.
I confess to never having read any of Wofle’s books, though I did enjoy the movie “The Right Stuff”. I also confess to just now losing interest before the end of the first page in Wolfe’s “Radical Chic” article. Shallow, self-regarding people are almost as boring as reading about them.
I’ve always equated the expression “Look Hot, be Cool” with the Radical Chic. Carly Simon’s “You’re so Vain” perfectly encapsulates them;
No substance, all flash with none of the right stuff.
I wouldn’t say I’m his biggest fan, but I enjoyed, at minimum, the four or five books of his that I’ve read. Radical Chic is not one of them. Always meant to read it and maybe I will before too long. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a great picture of another aspect of what was happening at the time.
“The Right Stuff” (virtually required reading for all military pilots) and “Bonfires of the Vanities” were two of Wolfe’s books that I read and enjoyed greatly. Like Michener (Bridges at Toko Ri) he knew how to observe and understand the world of military pilots, and then communicate it to his readers. I came to understand my own life better as a result. That he detested radical lefties was a great plus in my mind.
A great writer and a decent man. May he RIP.
Wolfe’s nonfiction may well hold up — his fiction is anything but deep. Flashy, colorful, rather exhausting to read because of the affectations of his style.
“Electric Kool-Aid” was the first Wolfe I read back in 1971. I didn’t know who Wolfe was. He wrote with clear vision of Ken Kesey and his proto-hippie group, the Merry Pranksters, yet with warmth as well. I just assumed Wolfe was another hip or hippie writer on the scene.
Some years pass and I read Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” about the Mercury astronauts — very different people from Kesey and Friends — yet Wolfe brought the same eye for detail and emotional warmth that put the reader into NASA’s special world.
Then I discovered Wolfe wasn’t a hippie or a pilot. He dressed in his trademark white suit, he was conservative and he enjoyed poking fun at the liberal arts establishment.
Wolfe’s genius was to recreate the subculture in which people live and how they interact within it and with people from other subcultures. Of course, Wolfe also developed his breathless, hyperkinetic writing style, which may wear on some readers.
Wolfe’s nonfiction may well hold up – his fiction is anything but deep. Flashy, colorful, rather exhausting to read because of the affectations of his style.
miklos000rosza: I prefer Wolfe’s nonfiction myself. For one thing the novels are awfully long. For another, the characters can be interesting and fun, but remain flat, almost cartoonish. They don’t come to life as well as his portraits of real people.
As I understand Wolfe, his novels were largely attempts to lay track for a new realism in American literature based on journalistic techniques — to lead by example. His novels were bestsellers and annoyed many respected writers, but sadly haven’t had much impact I can detect.
Although one can argue that Wolfe’s novels did influence the long-arc television shows like “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad,” and “The Americans,” which take place in special subcultures and much of the appeal for viewers is introducing them to those different worlds.
I believe Kurt Sutter, the creator and main writer of “Sons of Anarchy” about a motorcycle gang, cites Wolfe as an influence.
I’m old, and yet I was still a child when that article was written. Could have been written yesterday with a slightly different cast of characters, but not really, because no one nowadays would dare. RIP, Thomas Wolfe.
BTW, there was a recent book of his that I meant to get, and didn’t. I’ll go get it. Love kindle. But too many books as he ability to buy exceeds the time to read.
I envy you that you’re just discovering him!
I was working for the welfare department in Philly when I read about Radical Chic.(didn’t read it till later). My caseload area was a stone’s thrown from the Robin Hood Dell, which was the summer home of the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was at the time when soul food was becoming chic, and there was a takeout there, which was quite popular. I had to visit an apartment right above it one day, and I have never seen so many cockroaches in my life. The Philly Radical Chic would have died if they bothered to do more to learn about reality instead of virtue signallng.
Wolfe became someone for me who really knew what he was talking about. I also didn’t see much support for the Panthers among my welfare clients or black coworkers either. I guess they didn’t have enough money. We need people like Wolfe who will tell us about things as they are.
huxley,
I think you and I are, so to speak, on the same page about Tom Wolfe.
I read The Right Stuff when I was in high school- this would have been around 1981 or so. I had never heard of Tom Wolfe before that point, but I did remember that book and the author (I loved it) when Bonfire of the Vanities came out in 1987, and that book was a big deal at the time in Newsweek and Time. It was such a big deal that I got on the list at the library and read it sometime towards the end of 1987 when I was a senior in college. I loved the book a great deal, and reread it about 20 years later and loved it even more.
Did it change my life? No, but it was a great novel- I literally read it beginning to end in about two days time. I loved it so much that I eagerly awaited the chance to read his next novel, but, alas, he didn’t publish another novel until 1998. I read that one, too, A Man in Full. I liked that one very much, too, but have not read either of the last two novels he wrote.
When I reread Bonfire in around 2007, I also started reading much of his non-fiction stuff, but was less enthralled with that- probably because I don’t have the cultural immersion in the topics the way a Baby Boomer might have- so things like Radical Chic go right over my head to a certain degree.
I plan to pick up the last two novels at some point this Summer and read them, though.
I think you and I are, so to speak, on the same page about Tom Wolfe.
miklos: I enjoy your comments and have similar reservations about Wolfe’s novels.
I’m reminded of Anthony Powell, the British novelist. He wrote a gorgeous twelve-volume series, “A Dance to the Music of Time,” which was largely based on people Powell knew over the course of his life.
In interviews Powell freely admitted he didn’t know how to create fiction out of whole cloth. I don’t think Wolfe could either.
I agree with miklos and huxley — I love Wolfe’s non-fiction but found his fiction very lacking.
One minor mention from The Right Stuff came to mind during the advent of the #MeToo movement. Women used to drive 100 miles out into the desert from Los Angeles to screw the test pilots and astronauts at Pancho Barnes’ Happy Bottom Riding Club. I guess they didn’t get the message that they were victims being oppressed by those evil examples of “Toxic Masculinity.”
I likewise know OF Wolfe, without ever having read any of his work. Somehow their subject matter never appealed to me. Interesting to see the variety of responses here about his fiction and non-fiction; it’s good to see that differences in taste can exist without signaling a need for Diversity Wars to break out.
“That he detested radical lefties was a great plus in my mind.”
“His novels were bestsellers and annoyed many respected writers, but sadly haven’t had much impact I can detect.”
Unfortunately, civilly and politically, the radical lefties seem to have won.
AesopFan:
I have a theory about Wolfe, and I have absolutely no idea whether it’s correct. It’s just a hunch. The hunch is that he is much more read by men than by women. I tried to read that “Radical Chic” article after his death, and I got a few pages into it and lost interest. I do remember reading about it, though, and that was interesting.
I read the annotated version that Gringo linked, and I think the asides made the original article much more interesting because of the back-grounding; I like knowing why authors made the choices they did, and Wolfe’s were as interesting to me as the article, if not more so.
At this late date – and knowing only a very few of the names he dropped – I read it more like a short story.
It had kind of a “Saki” feel to me, only edgier.
On the men v. women readers, it’s hard to tell — most of the replies have been from the men here (so far as I know), with only a couple from the women — almost 3 to 1 if my knowledge base is not too far off.
Too small a sample, and perhaps the people who didn’t like him just aren’t saying so.
However, judging from just the Radical Chic article, Wolfe’s work seems more like a personality-related taste to me, perhaps one that cuts across sex boundaries but is correlated, and possibly it hits on a point that is on the upper-distribution of men and the lower-distribution of women, as computer coding does.
Also, many of the commenters liked “The Right Stuff” which probably appeals more to men than to women to start with, and perhaps that is a factor.
This is a particularly relevant passage from Radical Chic, as if Wolfe is talking about our own SJWs and Antifa thugs, with the Politically Correct Elite that tries to surf on their wave. Just how long has this been going on, anyway?
The surprise to me, now, is not that we had two such astoundingly horrible candidates in Clinton and Trump (although I am very happy with a lot of what President Trump has done, and would have been outraged at anything Hillary did), but that it took us so long to get to them.
* * *
“From the beginning it was pointless to argue about the sincerity of Radical Chic. Unquestionably the basic impulse, “red diaper” or otherwise, was sincere. But, as in most human endeavors focused upon an ideal, there seemed to be some double-track thinking going on. On the first track–well, one does have a sincere concern for the poor and the underprivileged and an honest outrage against discrimination. One’s heart does cry out–quite spontaneously!–upon hearing how the police have dealt with the Panthers, dragging an epileptic like Lee Berry out of his hospital bed and throwing him into the Tombs. When one thinks of Mitchell and Agnew and Nixon and all of their Captain Beef-heart Maggie & Jiggs New York Athletic Club troglodyte crypto-Horst Wessel Irish Oyster Bar Construction Worker followers, [ancestors of the Deplorables, obviously] then one understands why poor blacks like the Panthers might feel driven to drastic solutions, and–well, anyway, one truly feels for them. One really does. On the other hand–on the second track in one’s mind, that is–one also has a sincere concern for maintaining a proper East Side lifestyle in New York Society. And this concern is just as sincere as the first, and just as deep. It really is. It really does become part of one’s psyche. For example, one must have a weekend place, in the country or by the shore, all year round preferably, but certainly from the middle of May to the middle of September. It is hard to get across to outsiders an understanding of how absolute such apparently trivial needs are. One feels them in his solar plexus. When one thinks of being trapped in New York Saturday after Saturday in July or August, doomed to be a part of those fantastically dowdy herds roaming past Bonwit’s and Tiffany’s at dead noon in the sandstone sun-broil, 92 degrees, daddies from Long Island in balloon-seat Bermuda shorts bought at the Times Square Store in Oceanside and fat mommies with white belled pants stretching over their lower bellies and crinkling up in the crotch like some kind of Dacron-polyester labia–well, anyway, then one truly feels the need to obey at least the minimal rules of New York Society. One really does.
One rule is that nostalgie de la boue–i.e., the styles of romantic, raw-vital, Low Rent primitives–are good; and middle class, whether black or white, is bad. Therefore, Radical Chic invariably favors radicals who seem primitive, exotic and romantic, such as the grape workers, who are not merely radical and “of the soil,” but also Latin; the Panthers, with their leather pieces, Afros, shades, and shoot-outs; and the Red Indians, who, of course, had always seemed primitive, exotic and romantic. At the outset, at least, all three groups had something else to recommend them, as well: they were headquartered 3,000 miles away from the East Side of Manhattan, in places like Delano (the grape workers), Oakland (the Panthers) and Arizona and New Mexico (the Indians). They weren’t likely to become too much . . . underfoot, as it were. Exotic, Romantic, Far Off . . . as we shall soon see, other favorite creatures of Radical Chic had the same attractive qualities; namely, the ocelots, jaguars, cheetahs and Somali leopards.”
Here is a long excerpt of the interview part, that is perhaps relevant to our political discussions – what makes people in the Deep State tick, perhaps.
It’s colored in the original, so I will add paragraphs and bolding; the interviewer is in italics, and Wolfe’s replies are plain type.
* * *
I often wonder why a powerful person agrees to talk to a journalist. There’s so much potential downside, and the upside is fleeting publicity. How did you pitch this to Burden?
I didn’t know them, but I remember going to that apartment, and marveling at how close to the people it was, even though it was on Fifth Avenue. It was a very rundown place.
As I read this, I thought, Why did Amanda Burden agree to let Tom Wolfe –
Somebody agreed to let me come in there. I think it goes back to this information compulsion. It makes people feel good.
Do you think that’s why powerful people, despite it not being in their best interest, will talk to journalists?
Yeah, I think so. I remember talking once to Abe Ribicoff. When I was a graduate student, they have these weeks where distinguished people come and make themselves available to all kinds of student organizations. We had a little thing called the American Studies Club. During the course of the week, Abe Ribicoff agreed to come. I asked him, very naively, “What is it that motivates politicians? Is it the money, the power? What is it? The publicity?” And he said, “Well, it’s certainly not the publicity. You get so used to it that you just expect it.” And then he said, “Unless you’re an idiot, it’s not the money.” And he says, “You find out that even at the federal level, you don’t really have that much power. There are very few people who you can point to, and say, ‘You do this and you do that.’ ” But, he said, “The real kick is seeing them jump.” I said, “Seeing them jump?” “Yeah,” he said. “You come into a room and everybody jumps up! Everyone offers you whatever seat you want. If you even hint that you might be hungry, 10 people want to go out and get you something from the restaurant.” He said, “Seeing ’em jump. That’s what it’s all about.” Of course, this was a student organization, and there was no one there with even an interest in publishing it. But he was really letting you in on something there, and you could really get a kick out of your own sophistication, if you say something like that.
I have a theory about Wolfe, and I have absolutely no idea whether it’s correct. It’s just a hunch. The hunch is that he is much more read by men than by women.
neo: That would be my hunch too.
Joan Didion and Wolfe are lumped together as founding members of the New Journalism, which added a strong subjective perspective to regular journalism. Nonetheless, Didion and Wolfe write quite differently.
With Didion I feel like I’m having tea with an intense, precise woman who is using her emotional being as a seismograph for her topic. It’s a deep, intimate communication.
With Wolfe I feel like I’m watching a brilliant ringmaster cuing my attention to one spectacle after another. It’s a performance. I know Wolfe’s persona but not really who he is.
Of course both are valid approaches to writing — I wouldn’t want to choose one over the other. However, I would say Didion has a feminine style, while Wolfe sorts to the masculine.
huxley:
Having read quite a bit of that essay on Radical Chic, it seems to me that (at least on the evidence of the essay) Wolfe’s style is showy, shallow, and snarky. That sort of thing doesn’t interest me.
neo: Well, I can’t deny the prosecution’s case for showy and snarky. For some of us, those are features not bugs!
But as far as I’m concerned, dismissing Wolfe as shallow is pretty much like dismissing Orwell or (the real) Huxley as shallow.
Wolfe said things which may seem obvious, but he was bucking major intellectual currents to do so which takes courage, as well as intellectual ballast, to do so.
I’ve read most of Wolfe’s work and I consider him a plenty deep thinker. But his style (God bless him!) is not to tug his chin and pose as a Serious Intellectual.
__________________________________________
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
–George Orwell
huxley:
I was only commenting on that one essay. I can’t remember reading anything else by Wolfe.