TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/021389/02138900.042

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 13.4 KB | 306 lines

                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 90

Master Of His Universe


TOM WOLFE, a journalist and novelist with a keen eye for
society's foibles, looks back at a decade of greed and foresees
a cooling of the national lust for money and license

By Bonnie Angelo, Tom Wolfe


    His novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, spent 56 weeks on
the hard-cover best-seller list, and currently leads the
paperback list. He pioneered a kind of journalism that was
remarkable for its vivid verisimilitude and its unflinching
dissection of characters. In a conversation with New York
bureau chief Bonnie Angelo, Wolfe predicts that the nation will
seek a new moderation in its ways.

    Q. Decades are artificial measures, but that's what we use,
and you have a flair for defining them. You called the '60s
"the whole crazed, obscene, uproarious, Mammon-faced,
drug-soaked, Mau Mau, lust-oozing '60s." The '70s were "the Me
decade," "the sexed-up, doped-up, hedonistic heaven of the boom
boom '70s." As we close out the '80s, how do you define the
decade?

    A. It is the decade of money fever. It's almost impossible
for people to be free of the burning itch for money. It's a
decade not likely to produce heroic figures.

    In a way it's been an extension of normal human behavior,
more than the '70s and '60s. Then there was a reluctance among
educated people to show their affluence -- it was the time of
the debutante in blue jeans who worked in a child-care center.

    In the '80s people of affluence returned to the more normal
thing: they had it, they showed it. And that radiated throughout
society. When I was spending time in the Bronx, I saw young
black men wearing chains with what I thought was the peace
symbol. I thought, how interesting that these young men, living
in such difficult circumstances, would still be concerned about
such issues as world peace. And then I came to realize that
these weren't peace symbols -- they were the hood ornament from a
Mercedes. And they knew everything about a Mercedes, how much it
cost, how fast it would go. They knew Mercedes as the car of
choice of the drug dealer. Money, greed, reaches all through
society.

    Q. For 25 years, as a journalist and author, you have been a
commentator on life-styles and mores in this country. What's
happening to American society?

    A. I wouldn't presume to call myself a commentator. That
suggests having answers.

    Since the 1960s we have had extraordinary freedom in this
country, and we are seeing the good and the bad sides of the
same coin. We've had tremendous prosperity. In many ways we have
fulfilled the dream of the old utopian societies of the mid-19th
century. But the other side of the coin of prosperity is money
fever and the vanity that is the undoing of all the characters
in Bonfire.

    But I for one would not want to change this country. When
you think about conditions across the long panorama, the
poverty -- there's never been anything like this country, no
parallel for what money and freedom have brought to Americans.

    Q. Yet you seem pessimistic about our society. Is America
going the same road as Rome at its height?

    A. No. That's what is called the organic fallacy: countries
are not plants, they don't have life cycles that mean there is a
time to die. There's no reason we should be on a downward
course.

    Q. In a speech at Harvard, you were concerned about the
fifth freedom -- freedom from religion and ethical standards.

    A. After you've had every other freedom -- the four that
Roosevelt enunciated -- the last hobble on your freedom is
religion. We saw it in the '60s in the hippie movement, when
tens of thousands of young people quite purposely emancipated
themselves from ordinary rules.

    In the '60s Ken Kesey told his merry pranksters, Be what you
are. It didn't matter what, as long as it was what they really
felt they were. Being what you are was a revolutionary, radical
notion then. Now it is pretty much accepted

    That's particularly true in sexual issues. The sexual
revolution -- such a prim term -- was a tremendous change in the
'60s. Now we almost don't include it in discussions of morality.
We don't think of it in moral terms.

    In many ways this new freedom has been a marvelous
experiment, without parallel in history. But part has gone to an
excess.

    Q. Where do you see excesses?

    A. The '80s are wilder than the '60s. Rock music is much
wilder. Just think how tame the Beatles' music is today: it's
almost Muzak. And the sexual revolution -- in the mid-'60s the
idea of a coed dorm, putting those nubile young things and
these young men in the season of the rising sap in the same
dormitories, on the same floors! Now the coed dorm is like
I-95. It's there. It hums. And you don't notice it.

    Q. An erosion of standards?

    A. Erosion, no. It's been much faster than erosion. There's
been a sweeping aside of standards. Every kind of standard.

    Q. What does a seer of the American scene expect of the
'90s?

    A. The '70s were almost over when I called it the Me decade.
I don't deal in predictions, but you appeal to my vanity, so
I'll talk about it anyway. I think that in the '90s we'll
probably see a good bit of relearning, even though it might seem
boring. It's in the attitudes of college students now. I sense
they are already voluntarily putting the brakes on the sexual
revolution -- not screeching to a halt, and not just because of
AIDS.

    I think there will be a lot of discussion in the '90s about
morality. It has already begun. I pick it up in talking to
college students. I expect a religious revival. We already see
an awakening: the new interest in the Evangelicals, charismatic
versions of established religions, and new religious forms such
as est and channeling. That fifth freedom excites some and
upsets others.

    When Nietzsche said that God is dead, he said there would
have to be created a new set of values to replace the values of
Christianity. God was dead, but guilt was not, and there was no
way to absolve it. That, perhaps, is exactly the period we are
in. No use saying we are going to return to the dissenting
Protestant view of sexual morality at the turn of the century.
We won't.

    Q. These views have marked you as a conservative.

    A. When I'm called a conservative, I now wear that as a
badge of honor, because in my world it really just means you
are a heretic, you've said something unorthodox. You are
supposed to conform to certain intellectual fashions, and if you
don't, they say, "That's heterodoxy!"

    Q. Reading Bonfire, one felt you were writing about the
things going on around us now. Did it give you a jolt to see
those things and say, "Hey, that's Chapter 7"?

    A. Philip Roth said that we live in an age in which the
imagination of the novelist is helpless before what he knows he
will read in tomorrow's newspaper. And it's true! No one can
dream up the things that pop up in the papers every day.

    At one point I was a little worried about having my main
character, Sherman McCoy, losing $6 million for his firm in
about 15 minutes. I thought, "Well, this is fiction. I'll go
ahead and do it." My typewriter had hardly stopped moving
before I picked up the New York Times, and there on Page One was
an account of a young investment banker, about the same age as
my character, 38, who lost $250 million for his firm in a week.
I felt like Alice in Wonderland, running as hard as I can to
stay in the same place.

    Q. Bonfire has received great critical acclaim, but critics
have also called it cynical, racist, elitist.

    A. That's nonsense. I throw the challenge to them: if you
think it is false, go out and do what I did. Go beyond the
cocoon of your apartment and taxicab and take a look. Take
notes. Then let's compare notes. I'll bet your picture of New
York is not very different from mine.

    What they are really saying is that I have violated a
certain etiquette in literary circles that says you shouldn't be
altogether frank about these matters of ethnic and racial
hostility. But if you raise the issue, a certain formula is to
be followed: you must introduce a character, preferably from
the streets, who is enlightened and shows everyone the error of
his ways, so that by the time the story is over, everyone's
heading off wiser. There has to be a moral resolution.
Unfortunately, life isn't like that. I felt that if you are
going to try to write a novel about New York, you cannot play
falsely with the issue of ethnic and racial hostility. You can't
invent implausible morality tales and make it all go away in
some fictitious fashion.

    Q. How did you tackle the task to get the texture, the sound
of every layer of New York?

    A. I'm a journalist at heart; even as a novelist, I'm first
of all a journalist. I think all novels should be journalism +to
start, and if you can ascend from that plateau to some marvelous
altitude, terrific. I really don't think it's possible to
understand the individual without understanding the society.

    Q. Bonfire portrays New York at its worst, a city consumed
by greed and corruption.

    A. I never thought of it as a bleak picture. My feeling was
wonderment -- this amazing carnival was spread out before me. I
really love New York. It attracts ambitious people, not just at
the top. Think of all the Asians who have come here and have the
newspaper stands and candy stores and grocery shops. New York
is the city of ambition.

    Q. Americans seem obsessed by the quest for status, and
certainly the characters in Bonfire are, which suggests that you
are.

    A. Status is an influence at every level. We resist the
notion that it matters, but it's true. You can't escape it. You
see it in restaurants -- not just in New York. People seem
willing to pay any amount to be seen at this week's restaurant
of the century-. It's all part of what I call plutography:
depicting the acts of the rich. They not only want to be seen at
this week's restaurant of the century, they want to be embraced
by the owner. But status isn't only to do with the rich. Status
is fundament/al, an inescapable part of human life.

    Q. In your books you pay meticulous attention to what people
wear, as signals of status.

    A. Clothing is a wonderful doorway that most easily leads
you to the heart of an individual; it's the way they reveal
themselves.

    Q. Some critics say you judge a man by the shoes he wears.

    A. I take some solace in knowing that Balzac was criticized
the same way -- he was obsessed with furniture. Details are of
no use unless they lead you to an understanding of the heart.
It's no mystery; it has to do with the whole subject of status.

    Q. What would you say about a character who wears a
handsomely cut vanilla-colored suit on a winter day in New
York, with a lilac tie and matching striped shirt with a collar
seven stripes high, and shoes custom-designed to appear to have
white spats?

    A. I was afraid you might mention that. I suppose I might
say, "Here's somebody who's trying to call attention to
himself." But I leave that to others to interpret. It's always
hard to describe yourself.

    Q. Does it bother you to be called a "dandy"?

    A. Not at all. Writers, whether they want to admit it or
not, are in the business of calling attention to themselves. My
own taste is counter-bohemian.

    My white suits came about by accident. I had a white suit
made that was too hot for summer, so I wore it in December. I
found that it really irritated people -- I had hit upon this
harmless form of aggression!

    Q. Is America becoming too homogenized? Is individualism in
danger of being lost?

    A. No. I think this is a very wild country. Ever since the
'60s there has been a moving off dead-center. I see a lack of
inhibition. Look at international travelers. I used to think in
terms of Adolphe Menjou in his cloak, arriving on a ship, with
42 pieces of luggage. Now the international traveler comes into
Kennedy airport in a summer football sweatshirt and running
shorts, and his wife is wearing shorts and a T shirt and high
heels. And they are flying first-class.

    Q. Did you always want to be a writer?

    A. I decided at five or six that I wanted to be a writer. My
father was an agronomist and the editor of a magazine called
Southern Planter, in Richmond. I always thought of him as a
writer. And I wanted to write.

    Q. When you were a small child, there was another famous
Southern writer named Thomas Wolfe. Was that a subliminal
influence?

    A. I love his books. As a child I couldn't understand, since
his name was the same, why we weren't related. He was a
maximalist, and that's what I admire. Somebody once told him to
take out all that was not necessary. And he said, "No. I'm a
putter-inner." And that's what I am, a putter-inner.

    Q. Critics compare you with Dickens, Balzac, Zola. Pretty
good company.

    A. They were my models. Particularly Zola. It's the idea of
the novelist putting the individual in the setting of society at
large and realizing the pressure society exerts on the
individual. This is something that has been lost over the past
40 years in the American novel.

    Q. An assessment of yourself as a writer?

    A. I am just the chronicler. My passion is to discover, and
to write about it.