Hampton Style - August 15, 2008 - Tom Wolfe's Interior Life

by Lily Betjeman
Portrait on this page by Michael O'Neill/Corbis Outline.
All other photographs by Todd Selby/Corbis Outline.

One might suspect that a white-suited gentleman riding through the streets of Southampton in a pearly white Cadillac with ivory hubcaps has no qualms with being conspicuous, but when encountered at close quarters, the subtle and charming presence of writer Tom Wolfe suggests otherwise. A local in the community for decades, Wolfe assumes a somewhat subdued persona here; one with a wide range of genial incarnations. He and his wife, Sheila, entertain friends at home, and you may also find them at a farmstand or dining at Silver's. Wolfe has added his name in support of the Southampton Writers Conference, which he labeled "the best in the country." In 2006 he spoke to members of the Maidstone Club in its custard-yellow conference room amid a sea of pearls and plaid, discussing the eclipse of values among college students. (The lecture was given concurrent to the release of I Am Charlotte Simmons, which addresses such issues in his signature penetrating style.) A figure on the charity circuit, Wolfe is also just as likely to be spotted by Jitney riders who frequently catch a glimpse of the natty dresser uncharacteristically wearing sweats, enroute to the gym next to the bus station. (Most such sightings end up breathlessly recounted on the internet).

Inelegant gymwear isn't the only guise Wolfe dons when the reason is a good one, however: he recently returned to the East End from Miami, after an extensive period of research for his newest novel, Back to Blood, which is due out next year. The book deals with inflammatory issues of immigration in the neon-lighted, lipstick-painted city. As ever, Wolfe's research is not relegated to libraries and interviews. His disciplined technique centers around infiltrating a niche and residing within it, becoming something of a detached anthropologist. Test sites have been as varying as the stock-market boom of the '80s, Duke University, his daughter's alma mater, and Ken Kesey's Magic Bus.

Within the pool of vigorous talent who live on the East End, Tom Wolfe rests at the top of the heap. As an observer of modern manners and affectations, he delivers razor-sharp insight into pretense and status-seeking behavior in many circles, though he exhibits a particular astuteness for New York society. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), and Radical Chic (1970), the devastatingly revealing portrait of Leonard Bernstein's infamous party for the Black Panthers, propelled the writer to superstar status. It was the late Clay Felker, the founder of New York magazine recently eulogized by Wolfe in a coverstory for the magazine, who published Radical Chic in New York, giving Wolfe free rein to the length, depth and style of the essay. Although now dated, the book remains strangely relevant; nostalgie de la boue is thoroughly ingrained in those seeking class-distinction. Today's aspiring in-crowd still relishes the bohemian-chic described by Wolfe. But despite high-voltage exposure, the writer remains an enigma. The man who spends his energy skewering elitism owns a residence on Manhattan's Upper East Side and rents plum acreage off Lake Agawam in Southampton. Wolfe's genteel Virginia upbringing is worn, quite literally, on his white sleeve-he is a proper Southern gent. Rather not of his era, his spats and trademark white suits, of which he has more than 40, all crafted by his favorite tailor, enhance his sophisticated manner. His affected dress seems excusable, however; almost a delightful irony. It's worn on a man so intimate with status and its ravages that he is entitled to take up the look of a dandy.

More telling, perhaps, than the sartorial armor in which he is cloaked, are the bookshelves lining his walls, the place where it seems most possible to catch a glimpse of the man's interior life. Peruse the shelves of Dr. Wolfe, and you'll find fat Dickens anthologies, Émile Zola, H.L. Mencken, coffee-table books on Bauhaus, and a selection of volumes on local vernacular. He is at once an outsider and an insider, clutching with wild talent exactly what's happening in social circles, but remaining at arm's length from its members. Perhaps this distance helps enable him to relay it so deftly, but it has also earned him harsh criticism. A reviewer once famously compared his social conscience to that of an ant. He emerged from the 1960s unmoved by its radical politics, making himself an exception among intellectual circuits, and, for his lot, possesses a refreshing but most unfashionable political conservatism.

Although showing early aspirations towards a literary career (the prodigy was interested in the life and works of Mozart at the tender age of 9, and penned a biography of Napoleon that same year), Wolfe was not solely devoted to his interior life. He wanted to be a baseball player after graduating with distinction from Washington and Lee, but didn't make the team. After earning a Ph.D in American Studies at Yale, he flung himself into journalism, but to surprisingly slim pickings. The overqualified reporter was offered only a few positions after applying for dozens. However, after beginning at the Springfield Union, he quickly climbed the publishing ranks, landing prize positions at the Washington Post and the New York Herald Tribune. His father, a professor of agronomy, influenced his intellectual ambition, and his mother encouraged him to be an artist, the synthesis proving particularly ripe for Wolfe.

Under deadline pressure for a fateful assignment on souped-up American cars in Southern California, the New Journalism (creative nonfiction) movement was born. Not able to put his work together in a neat little essay, Esquire published the notes as written. The fragmented, heavily stylized and punctuated sentences in There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1964) hit a sweet spot and earned national attention, coining the phrase "good 'ol boy" in its wake. Deliciously readable, the lines somehow grasped at the nature of the dazzling automobile craze in ways normal reporting might not have. The term New Journalism was officially branded when Wolfe published a collaborative manifesto on the style in 1973. Frequently shifting perspectives, hyperbole and extravagant punctuation screamed fiction, but accompanied by Wolfe's intensive research and factual details, the line between fiction and non-fiction was forever smudged. His marvelous knack for dialogue, complete with of-the-moment jargon, builds a liquid momentum, making him positively can't-put-downable. Not only does his style simply work, but the unascertainable quality of the genre is fitting with his own desire not to be pigeonholed.

Criticized as having produced neither real journalism (you know... facts, facts, facts!) nor literature (only pure fiction may claim this haloed bastion), Wolfe has had his share of dressings-down, including very public feuds with Norman Mailer, John Updike and John Irving. He once called them "the three stooges" of literature, but, while serious in his critiques, literary feuds are often tinged with fondness; one must, after all, respect an opponent if he takes the time to stage an attack.

Wolfe raised eyebrows earlier this year when he left longtime publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux for Little, Brown and Co., but the move seemed appropriate for the tide. In spite of some mud-slinging, Wolfe appears to have emerged unsullied, his creamy white suit pressed to perfection.

The Southern gent infects his reader with self-awareness, a gift great comedians often possess, poking hilarious and sometimes scathing fun of his characters. They are enveloped, however, in a tender sort of empathy. This stance frees him of self-righteousness, which seems to aid him in building a relationship between reader and writer. Sherman McCoy of Bonfire is a sad prig, luxuriating in his own indiscretions when we first meet him, but after witnessing his redemption, he is a genuinely winning character, one whose turnaround we're delighted to have witnessed.

When the big bomb of sexism joins the other pointed criticisms, one might call to mind the richly created heroine of his 2006 novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. Wolfe has professed to identifying with Charlotte. (The author, like his fictional leading lady, has suffered bouts of depression.) The intellectually ambitious girl from the country gets hurled into a topsy-turvy freshman year at a fictional Ivy school, DuPont University, only to find that sexual prowess and athleticism are the trump-cards among her peers. She is a permanent outsider relegated to constant observing.

Wolfe models his writing in part on the works of Zola, his self-professed idol, who undertook writing as a social scientist might. His penetration of social behavior melds hyper-acute observation with lyrical renderings of place; a sour beer smell in a fraternity-house basement comes viscerally to life on Wolfe's canvas. Although arguably flavored with didacticism, Wolfe insists I Am Charlotte Simmons is not a cautionary tale but a work formed from extensive research into contemporary coed behavior. For this, the man beginning his seventh decade endured keg stands and cheerleaders.. Wolfe dedicates the book to his children, and in so doing owns up to any shortcomings he may have in capturing the younger generation:

"I learned that using the oath 'Jesus Christ' establishes the speaker as, among other things, middle-aged or older. So does the word 'fabulous,' as in 'That's fabulous!' Today the word is 'awesome.' So does 'jerk', as in 'Whatta jerk!' It has been totally replaced by a quaint anatomical metaphor."

The chronicler still writes with the unwavering intensity he's had for decades. "To me, the great joy of writing is discovering" said Wolfe in an interview with Brown University. "Most writers are told to write about what they know, but I still love the adventure of going out and reporting on things I don't know about." And so the writer remains a journalist at heart, but a rare one at that.

Wolfe referenced the 20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes when speaking to the UK Observer: "Keynes said the people who are successful are the people with animal spirits who refuse to acknowledge the risks they are taking in the same way that the healthy young man ignores the possibility of death. I am not a young man, but I do have a pulse. When it comes to mortality, mostly I choose to ignore the subject."