If you want to be a good writer, we are told, you need to read. A lot. I must confess, I haven't read nearly enough in my life, and if my writing is deficient you know at least part of the reason why. Another side effect of my reading deficit is that it's always hard for me to identify influences. In some ways I've read broadly, but not so deep into any one or two particular authors so as to call my self a disciple. But if pressured I would say that Ive been influenced the most by the New Journalism, and by extension one of this late 20th century movement’s great exemplars Tom Wolfe, who passed away this week at the age of 87.
Wolfe was a bit of an enigma. He was embraced by conservatives, though he really wasn't a movement conservative himself. His voting record includes both Republicans and Democrats with Bill Clinton and Barak Obama being the most noteworthy Dems on the list. He was a southern gentleman who lived in New York City for over 50 years. He was an American writer who wore white suits in homage to Mark Twain, yet was heavily influenced by Dickens, Zola, and Flaubert.
In the style of New Journalism, Wolfe placed himself in the middle of his stories, acting as a not so passive observer of the action. He presented himself as more detached, and was certainly less flamboyant, than his literary contemporary Hunter Thompson, but was still accused of embellishing his scenes, blurring the lines between journalism and fiction. When he switched to straight out fiction he brought a journo’s eye to novel writing. He claimed that any major scene in his novels were based on things he had either seen in person, or were taken from interviews of multiple sources.
He was sympathetic toward those he considered on the outside of high society. While not blind to the absurdities of the hippie culture, he showed a certain affection for the Merry Pranksters of The Electric Cool-Aide Acid Test. On the contrary he had a barely disguised disdain for the Manhattan elites of Radical Chic, his eye witness account of a cocktail party cum Black Panthers fundraiser at composer Leonard Bernstein's Park Avenue penthouse. In his penultimate novel, I am Charlotte Simmons, we see a highly intelligent, if naive freshman co-ed from the wrong side of the socioeconomic tracks corrupted by a cynical and depraved university culture. Somewhere in the middle we have A Man In Full’s Charlie Crocker, an Atlanta real estate developer in the 1990’s; a sort of cross between Donald Trump and Foghorn Leghorn. He’s at once a nouveau riche bafoon and lovable crumugion from a bygone era, struggling to make sense out of the social mores shifting around him.
In what you might imagine is par for the course for me, I never read his two most famous works: the non-fiction The Right Stuff, about the early days of the U.S. space program, nor his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, about New York in the roaring '80's, though I did read bits and pieces of it as it was being serialized in Rolling Stone, before it's hardcover release in 1987. But what I have read of him, Thompson and Joan Didion, a strong woman's voice from that era, have influenced how I see the world, and express my self in words, even if I don't agree with everything those authors put down on paper. He, and they, have certainly made me a better writer. For that I am indebted.
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, Jr....Eternal rest grant unto him oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace,
AMEN
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