Wolfeman Tom

You know, Tom Wolfe really seems like he'd be a really interesting guy to have over for dinner.

On the origin of the legendary white suits: when young Mr. Wolfe first moved to New York City, he was working at the New York Herald-Tribune. This was during an era when reporters working for reputable daily newspapers were expected to wear a jacket and tie every day. Wolfe had two suits, and he wasn't going to be buying out Macy's on a junior reporter's salary. As summer approached, he purchased a white silk tweed suit -- something that he didn't think was entirely out of line, as he was born and raised in Richmond, VA, where men wore either seersucker suits or white linen during the summer. Unfortunately, the silk tweed was too hot to wear in the heat of the summer, so he reluctantly put it away until the fall. One day in November, he pulled it out of the closet, and the rest, as they say, is history. The fact that pretty much everyone hated it sealed the deal for young Tom.

For all his historical success as an intellectual revolutionary, Wolfe comes across, somewhat paradoxically, as a fairly conservative thinker. Not conservative in the political sense -- he is a self-described "Jeffersonian Democrat" -- but intellectually conservative. His one-man campaign to save American literature from itself (primarily by urging a return to Zola-esque naturalism: fiction that comes from reportage, a view that ironically has its roots in New Journalism, or the treatment of reportage in a literary fashion) has earned him Norman Mailer, John Updike, and John Irving as enemies. Agree with him or not, but he must be doing something right (it probably didn't hurt -- or help, depending on how you look at it -- that his second novel, A Man In Full, was a colossal success).

His mid-seventies broadside on the art establishment, The Painted Word, was somewhat less successful; his observation that the current exhibitions at the Guggenheim served as an indication of how (un)successful that book was immediately followed by a caustic aside about the motivations of artists who produce 'collector-proof' art.

He remains a tall, thin, gentleman in an impeccable white suit and necktie; from my seat in the auditorium, he looks far younger than his years. It looks like his only concession to age is that his hair has turned the same color as his suits.

I'm afraid that no-one had thought to ask him about Hunter S. Thompson or his opinion of the internet (this of a man who writes 10 pages a day (triple-spaced, so that works out to about 1,300 words) on a manual typewriter). Perhaps I'll ask him when he's over for dinner.