INTERVIEW, Page 90Master Of His UniverseTOM WOLFE, a journalist and novelist with a keen eye forsociety's foibles, looks back at a decade of greed and foreseesa cooling of the national lust for money and licenseBy 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
