Tom Wolfe, the Art of Fiction No. 123 (1991) | Hacker News Reader

Tom Wolfe, the Art of Fiction No. 123 (1991)

theparisreview.org

41 pointspepys9 comments

It doesn’t matter if your audience doesn’t know what a gadrooned platter is. Often people are flattered to have an unusual word thrust upon them. They say, Well, that author thinks I know what he’s talking about!

This is one of those rare sentences that changes the way my mind works. When I read a weird word in a magazine piece, I usually think the author is being pretentious or needlessly flowery - perhaps even a secret handshake inside a literary class where I don't belong. It never occurred to me to think this was showing respect to the reader.

The irony of condescending to your readers is that it's only the people you actually want to impress who will notice.

I've read my share of Tom Wolfe, always with pleasure - he worked hard at making sure of that.

I'd say that "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" is probably the single most enlightening thing he wrote about how society works after 1960.

P.S. Just the note on gadrooned platters makes the interview worth reading (not even auto-correct knows what that is ...)

P.P.S. "If people want stories serially they’ll go to television." ... ah well ... that's really 1991 for you.

Can you clarify what you found enlightening about it?

There was a change in the way social conflict is handled. The late-XIX century way was making a city like Paris have wide, straight avenues and "pour la canaille la mitraille" - a straight military approach to class warfare.

The late-XX century is on the side of psych-warfare and pouring oil on troubled waters, i.e. buying peace on a piecemeal basis. It's right out on Wolfe's first paragraph: "They knew you were the right studs to give the poverty grants and community organizing jobs to."

(I was going to quote that originally, but forty years brought that line too close to today's reality bone ...)

There seems to be a common belief that the 'modern' era is somehow different to the past. I'm open to the idea, but in the most part it seems based on so little data that it can be discounted.

Maybe Wolfe has got some evidence, but I tend to be skeptical of those kinds of arguments. My default assumption is that people are exhibiting a historical or narrative bias.

The late 20th century didn't produce Sun Tzu or Machiavelli, for example, so it seems like counter-examples are available. Would love to see data.

I couldn't stand his right wing politics however his writing style was amazing, as an artist there was a lot to appreciate in terms of how he crafted his work.

>What about Thomas Wolfe? Did he float into your consciousness at all?

You are all witnessing the moment I discovered these are different people.

When the news came out that Tom Wolfe died I said "damn wasn't he super old though?" to my partner, and completely misinterpreted the weird look she gave me.

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17074489

This same Paris Review article was locked; I'm glad they unlocked it now. But other Paris Review articles are all locked and require subscription.

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