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September 28, 2005

The Man Who Cried "Wolfe"

In the spirit of Banned Books Week, as well as the news that henceforth, I Am Charlotte Simmons shall be the paperback that dare not speak its name, I feel the time has come, dear readers, for a wee discussion of Tom Wolfe.

A month or so ago, I was listening to an interview on NPR (isn't this how all my posts start) in which Tom Wolfe was promoting I Am Charlotte Simmons while simultaneously making a jackass of himself. Admittedly, this is not too dificult to do, true, but the man it so splendidly it would be a sin of omission not to mention it here.

If you follow anything about books, no doubt you already know how charmingly Wolfe comes off in interviews. For instance, this gem:

The Internet is the modern form of knitting. In the old days women who had nothing to do would knit, but at least you got something out of it -- a pair of socks, maybe a scarf, occasionally a little bedspread. That's mostly what the Internet is, just passing the time. But unfortunately you are dealing with words that can have meaning.

Tom Wolfe, apparently, is not aware that women "in the old days" didn't knit because they "had nothing to do" but because they were making things both useful and decorative. Maybe he thinks 'making things' is "nothing," though. Yeah, that's it. Because I'm sure that's how he would describe 'writing novels and essays'-- passing the time. Call me a crazy, hypersensitve, communist feminazi bitch, but I get the sense his disdain of the frivolous extends beyond knitten goods to knitters themselves. You know, women. Heavens forbid women fill their idle time with "words that can have meaning" instead of making him amusing curios, such as blankets.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, though. The old man, after all, is evidently confused by wacky computer technology:

The other problem is that you have to scroll. It is primitive in the sense that the Internet is a scrolling medium. A printed book with pages was such an advance over scrolling. To go back to scrolls is to step into the past. That goes back to monks in the 13th century.

Right. I so don't get this. It seems he has confused scrolling on a browser window with scrolling, you know, scrolls. I'm not saying I want to trade in my lovelies for ebooks or what-have-you, but I daresay depressing the downwards-pointing-arrow key is a bit less taxing than the scrolling of 13th century monks.

Mr. Wolfe, by the way, did some of his research for Charlotte at Stanford. It's cute the way he tries to make Stanford seem really debauched and depraved. For the record, Stanford, with its goddamn Christian accapella groups singing in White Plaza, its round-the-clock computer lairs that are always fucking packed, its fistfulls of Marshal scholars, is, if anything, not debauched or depraved enough. The Stanford I went to was Nerdtown. I guess he fell in with a bad crowd. He also has this to say:

But as far as I can tell they are really not bothering with [political correctness]. There is always a faction of activists. When I was visiting Stanford, students were protesting that the catering staff -- they weren't even university employees -- were underpaid. If that's as big an issue as you can come up with, then political correctness is not having a big effect on the students.

I'm not sure I understand why he's using a campaign for living wages as an example of political correctness. Maybe he means political awareness, since he spends a good deal of the interview yapping about how youngsters don't pay attention to the news. Maybe he mentions the students agitating for a living wage for workers because it's a totally great example of how self-involved and oblivious to reality college students are. Except that it's totally not. (F.Y.I., the "catering staff" that-- gasp-- "weren't even university employees" that Mr. Wolfe mentions are workers brought in by third-party contractors. In fact, one of the issues central to the living wage campaign is that it is unethical for the university to use contractors whose standards of fair pay and practices fall short of the university's own.)

I mention this all today because it has come to my attention, it being Banned Book Week and all, that Tom Wolfe's books are among the most frequently challenged and banned. Which is funny. See, the NPR interview I spoke of earlier was bubbling over with remarks deriding those residing in the wayward "parentheses" states for being out of touch with 'the real America.' A retarded, tired statement from anyone's mouth, it is just that much more delightful when the mouth in question belongs to an effete intellectual from New York and writer of what 'the real America' calls regard as pornographic filth. Yes, kids. Bonfire of The Vanities made the top hundred and even Charlotte Simmons got pulled from a radio program.

So yes, Tom Wolfe. You are so in touch with the Heartland. I bet, on Sundays, you even ban yourself. Right. And Thomas Freedman is one with the rabble on the street.

P.S. If anyone knows what the fuck he is referring to here, where he tells John Stuart about some "Filofax diaries" that, apparently, no girl goes without these days, please, please do share.

Posted by hissycat at September 28, 2005 03:03 PM

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