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50 Years of Radical Chic, Tom Wolfe, and Yours Truly
Radical Chic is now on its 50th anniversary and, lo and behold, America is again enjoying the horrors of race riots mixed with the rare delight of elites applauding violence against people other than themselves, acting as though the lives ruined or snuffed out don’t even matter. What wonders Enlightenment bestows on us sometimes! What cruelty is born of softness and sentimentality–and who better to reveal this ugliness hiding in glamour than Tom Wolfe! My editors at Modern Age and I didn’t time things, but my new essay on Tom Wolfe as the true educator of anti-liberal elites is now out, and I invite you to read it and share it, along with my other essays on our last great wit:
- Since we badly need American Stoicism back, here’s my essay for Law & Liberty on Wolfe’s novels and his Stoic protagonists.
- And since recently SpaceX has put men into space again, here’s my essay on Wolfe’s teaching concerning manliness, prudence, and technology in The Right Stuff, at Catholic World Report.
- Finally, Wolfe the essayist, a never-tiring enemy of the soft and irresponsible elites liberalism has produced–this time at University Bookman at the Kirk Center.
I’m here for the conversation and I recommend as your local essayist-about-town that you fix yourself a drink. I’ve written to our own dear @peterrobinson–perhaps I’ll be on the flagship podcast to talk about Wolfe. So I hope this is a more pleasant and more insightful way of dealing with the madness of our times. If we are to have madness, let us also have wit.
Published in Culture
I’m looking forward to reading them.
Enjoy!
When I was young and stupid (BIRM), I thought Tom Wolfe was not nearly as clever as everyone else thought he was. I was fortunate to meet him several times and quickly discovered he was precisely the sort of man every intellectual should strive to be. Tim Russert did an hour long interview with him on New Year’s Eve in the early 80s. It probably is online somewhere and well worth watching if available.
How did you meet Wolfe?
Wolfe confused liberals of 50 years ago by being an eclectic conservative, back in the day when conservatives were seen as being hidebound and completely dismissive/incurious about the culture of the 1960s. Both he and Clay Felker’s New York magazine came out of the remains of the New York Herald-Tribune, which was considered more of a writer’s paper than The New York Times, where the editors held sway and reporters were all expected to do their stories in one voice (of course, 55-60 years ago, it was expected that the reporters would have the self-control to be individualistic in their styles, but not go off the rails on their advocacy, unless they were a columnist. The New York Times of 2020 allows their reporters to be far more individualistic in their voices, but not having any adult supervision of those voices, it’s not a healthy thing for the paper).
Wolfe was indeed like Buckley in that regard–as sophisticated & knowledgeable & competent as any liberal. Wolfe was the better novelist, though. It does not do conservatism any honor that his example has not been imitated & his services honored. There’s no Wolfe school of journalism or writing, because appreciation for art apparently is lacking. Our elites do not pay for such things. Indeed, it was liberals who made Wolfe’s career, not conservatives-
It helped that 50 years ago while the politics certainly was heated, the desire by liberals to cocoon themselves off from differing views was nowhere near what it is today. The Trib was New York’s establishment Republican paper, but it had liberal voices like Felker or Jimmy Breslin and there wasn’t a cancel culture as there is now (nor was their one at the Times). The progressives of today would try to crush Tom Wolfe to dust once he was identified as a conservative (something that was pretty obvious after the mockery of Radical Chic), while the same people would call for the heads of the top PBS executives and those at Ch. 13 in New York for daring to air “Firing Line”.
(Of course, the liberals of 50 years ago were far more confident their ideology was in total ascendancy — they might hate Nixon, but he was also the one who created the EPA and put in wage and price controls. Their hate was based more of foreign policy, and they got rid of Nixon in ’74. It was the shock of Reagan winning in 1980 and then winning in a landslide four years later that really jump started the current era of the angry progressive, seeking to muffle all opposing viewpoints, and Trump’s win four years ago just sent that tendency into hyperdrive — we can’t have the public hearing opposing ideas if to do so puts someone like that into the White House.)
Yes, indeed–in their arrogance, liberals were quite generous. Now, since they fear losses, if not defeat, that’s all gone-
I suppose that this is not really to your point, but one thing that struck me about Wolfe’s fiction–especially “Bonfire” and Back to Blood–is the strength of the secondary characters and the scenes in which they are involved. Just off the top of my head, the description of Art Basel in Miami–Wolfe territory if there ever was–was captivating.
I should add that Lou Diamond Phillip’s narration of “Blood” for the audiobook is superb.
Washington and Lee university has hosted a Tom Wolfe lecture weekend sponsored by his W&L class of 1951 since about 2001. He introduced the chosen artist being honored, attended the multiple sessions including dinner and cocktails and gave the closing comments. The list of writers who have been honored is impressive. I have been to most of the weekends and always come away feeling much smarter than I deserve.
Really wish that I’d been aware of this. I don’t know how much Lexington has changed, but it was a favorite road trip for me schooling and living in D.C.
Agree on both counts. He was careful & competent–he had a nose for events & he put in the work to get them right…
Are these things online, in some part–some lecture or conversation?
I tried to find the Tim Russert interview of Tom Wolfe on YouTube but couldn’t find it. There is a pretty good interview there by some guy named Peter Robinson.
They have put some things online but most are fairly recant. Check with Rob Fure at the office of Special Programs at W&L.
Lexington changes very slowly, like all great Southern towns. I started participating in on campus adult education programs at W&L in 1995 and soon expanded that to international travel through the office of Special Programs. Mrs. Pessimist and I are not alumni but through attending probably fifty on campus programs and 37 international trips we have hundreds of friends who actually did graduate from W&L. The Office of Special Programs was designed for faculty development and is separate from alumni affairs. We have never received any request for donation to the school but our fellow participants have been generous.