JANUARY 1S83 /i 15 The Perils Of Parenthood Doctors In Dresses NewAmericans MOTHER WeTake Tom Wolfe To Dinner 765414 F aWOLFE th CHIC BY CHRiSTOPHER CLOTHING HITCHENS sional neurosis or something of that to walk in like jotbail players, like sort. Instead she suggested that I per- they had a keg of beer between their remember going to a party several I years ago, where chanced to meet a woman quite prominent in the world of painting. I'd just written ThePainted Word,aboutfashionin Americanart, andshe hadsent a letter to my editor suggesting that the essay was merely a chancefor me to exacerbatea deeppsychologicaldisorder. So! approached her and asked in what I thought was a lighthearted war, she mighttell mejustwhat my troublewas. Instead, she madea suggestionas to a quaint anatomical impossibility that! might perform on myself and left the I f room. TOM WOLFE, QUOTED IN The New York Times Magazine,DECEMBER20, 1981. to see a copy ofthe letter andI ran into her at a party. So I happened 7 I said, must tell you, happenedto see a copy of what you wrote, and you could do me a greatfavor rfyou would explain my afflictionto me, because believe that prophylaxis is a good thingto air/ifor in mental health as wellas in suchareasas tetanus and diseases ofthat sort."At the very least, I expecteda littledissertationonobses- I form. a crude anatomical impossibility on myself and then left the party. [LaughterII TOMWOLFE, INTERVIEWWITHRolling Stone, AUGUST21, 1980. eager would tell the man to legs. TOM WOLFE, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak catchers, 1970. he advertisers presented it [light beer] on television in T commercials that always showeda thinbrew in the mitts he'd tell himtogo to a lower of some famous jock who altitude, and the man kept walked with a rolling sprung-thigh suggesting quaint anatomi- gait, as if he had two kegs of Dortcalimpossibilities forYeager toperform munder Dark suspendedfrom his inon himself guinal canal. TOM WOLFE, The Right Stuff, SEFFEMBER TOMWOLFE, in Our Time, 1980. check his oxygen system, 1979, Let's admit from the start that Tom Wolfe has had averyinterestinglife. A practicedraconteur, too. Haunted by a demented woman, yet remaining calm and politewhile reservingforhimselfall the best lines. Mmmmm—smart as a whip. And that celebrated gift of phrase, whichdeserts himonly in conversation. He's so seldom lost for a laconic understatement or a vivid metaphor. I T You see: he gets better all the time. Slice it whicheverway you want. The American culture is a notoriously easy one to impress.Tom Wolfe has benefited from this in two ways. First, he has done wellby doinggood— bypointingoutthe fads and absurdities, thetrendsand crazes that convulsethe countryin spasmodic and unpredict- J LLUST R 4 TI ON BY he white bureaucrats, and the black ones, too, walked in try- ingto look as earthyand rug- ged as they could, in order to be "withthepeople." They tried 1983 JANUARY 12 • KIM WHITESIDES MOTHER JONES able waves. Second, he has himselfbe- that it bespoke the social form of the come accepted as a sort of cultural au- JItture. Until Solzhenitsvn. The Gulag thority—and if anything proves the Archipelago destroyed the Marxist gullibility of the American people in myth, utterly, despite Western relucourtime, thatcertainly does. tance to welcome Solzhenitsynhimself. As he evolves into a fad in his own It transpired that Solzhenitsyns right, Wolfe makes it ever clearerwhat accusation embraced all Marxism. of a consecratedconservativehe is. There As a result, said Wolfè, "Marxism in was always a reactionary growl under the tone of his writing; even at his intellectual circles is now in its ,nansweetest and most amusing he usually nerist phase—beyondBaroque." had the time for a barb or a jeer where radicals were concerned. But as the That last sentence is typical Wolfe: apdust settles over the '60s and the '70s, parently poised and polished, with a andasitbeginsto look asifweareinfor certain assurance and some show of a long winter of the Right, Wolfe has learning, but finally shallow and afcome Out in even bolder colors. fected. (Have you ever, really, read Once, at least, he was the amused anything of his twice?) Even people and detached chronicler of the great who have scarcely read him at all, or American exotic, professionally un- who are unaware of his more reserved shockable and tolerant (if cynical) and refined prejudices, use his catch about Ken Kesey, Junior Johnson and phrases and bywords: "radical chic," the rest. Down the years, however, he "the Me Decade," "the Right Stuff." has grown an outer shell, composed He has an adman's gift. But what is he chiefly of particles of distaste for mod- selling? What is he, perhaps itwould be ernism. Now there are the dinners at betterto say, popularizing? the Reagan White House, the soirees Take his single most famous essay— with Nancyand the chummytimeswith thatsame "Radical Chic" (1970), which William F. Buckley,Jr. Last January, at in manywayswrotefinis to the '60s.It is the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado very well written and most clearlyobSprings, Wolfewent so far as to deliver served. Who denies, or denied at the the keynotespeech at a meeting of the time, that there was a lot of foolishness ShavanoInstitute. in those days? Yet Wolfe is striking Shavano is the newest and perhaps much harder than a satirist would. His the roughest of the right-wingfounda- intentionwas reallyto do harm, and he tions that have graced the Reagan era. succeededbrilliantly. Other guest speakers included Lyn The adman's technique is evident at Nofziger,Richard Allen, Bob Bleiberg once. The phraseRadicalChicappears, of Barron's and Frank Barnett of the with capital letters, eight times in the National Strategy Information Center, first nine pages. This is hardly Oscar whocalled for an alliance ofthe United Wilde, perhaps, but it is highly effecStates, South Africa and conservative tive, repetitive promotion. If you want forces in the Middle East. Joseph a culturalclichéto be bornin your own Coors, Birchitebrewer and union bust- name, it doesn't pay to be too subtle. er, was there. It was not by any means Still more interesting, at a distance, is an amateur gathering. And yet, as Wolfe's skillinunderstandingand using William Buckley's National Review re- certainpolitical codes. He noticed, that crazy evening in ported the event: Leonard Bernstein's Park Avenue he pièce de résistance of the apartment, something that was dormeeting was Tom Wolfe's mant, somethingthat was yettohappen luncheon speech—a soaring on a significant register. He detected performance, stringing anec- the splitbetween liberalJews and radiblacks. He employed some créde dotes, informative and hi- cal effects make it evident—gossip-collarious, into a resonant statement umnistto tactics about eye contact and about the declineofradical chic. Intel- social tension and differences in accent lectuals andjournalists, he observed, —buthe also quoted a handy chunk of have refused to admit the element of SeymourMartin Lipset. And he made sheerfashion in the realm ofideas. And the most of the awkwardness that had intheWest theideologyofMarxismhas sprungupbetweenOtto Premingerand long enjoyedan aura ofdaring, a sense Black Panther leader Don Cox: T JANUARY 1983 14 M ost people in the room don't know what the hell Preminger is driving at, but Leon Quat andthe littlegray man know right away. They're trying to wedge into the argument. Thehell with that little number, that Israel andAl Fatah and UAR and MiGs and USSR and Zionist imperialist number—not in this roomyou don't— Very sharp. There's no doubt that Wolfe has excellent ears and instincts (as an adman must) for picking up atmosphere. Not everything he tries comesoff. From Bauhausto OurHouse is corny, and "Funky Chic" just didn't make it. But, then, those are the breaks. As Gore Vidal put it to me, "He has very little talent and not much of a mind—to be successful his little antennae must be good." They certainlyare. Indeed, a phrasefrom "Rad- ical Chic" very aptly describesWolfe's own style. What he calls "status radar" in that essayishis stockintrade,and in a nervousand unstablesocietyanybody who has such a thing has an enormous advantage over those who merely wish that theyhad it. "Radical Chic" is, of course, not quite the only time Wolfehas attacked and ridiculedthe rich. But he has lampooned wealth only in the form ofconscience money—whatused to be called "limousine liberalism." The Super Rich, those who just have great wealth and considerit their right, are safefrom Wolfe'swaspishpen. Crass Republican money,"new" or "old," isO.K. by him. As long as you don't try to pose as a friend of the masses, he'll leave you in peace to enjoy yourdough. Norhave any absurdities ofthe conservative social scene (those evenings with Nancy!) ever tempted him into print. Wolfe is keeping his plate warm with the Right People. I spent an enjoyable evening with him in NewYork Citynot long ago. We met in the companyofmutual friends at Elaine's, the gruesome media restaurant high on Second Avenue. Here, rubbernecksin search of Woody Allen areseldomdisappointed(norwere they that night: they got him and David Bowie and Bob Balaban and Mikhail Baryshnikov). The perfect spot for an eveningofsocial ironies. Wolfe is as dandyish as one might expect—even a touch more. A nice palesuit ina discreet check,with a high. stiff-collaredshirt. The cuffs were prominent and so were the links. The handkerchiefin the breast pocketwas a mere grace note to the harmony. It was justpossible to imaginehimin spatsand a watchchain, buthe isn't at allthe type to overdress. Unlike many short fellows, he looksgood in a hat. In commonwith quite a few Virginians. he is rather British in appearance and demeanor. (Britishness and a familiarity with British life are some of thearrowsinhis writing quiver, too.) In fact, he reminded me distinctly of a minor Torymember of Parliament—an impression I checked,successfully, with two London socialites who were present. He has an easy and pleasant smile, W6LFE'S PROSE CONTAINSAN DERTONE OF GROWL. SOME- TIMES THE - YELLOWING -FANGSARE BARED IN _ FULL SNARL. - MOTH ER JONES very nice manners, and a strangely smooth and somehow sexless kind of youthfulness about him. A word—fastidious—suggested itself at once. He drank. very slowly, a light Michelobbeer (good choice in Elaine's. where the house wine tastes like shark repellent). With only the slightest gesture he indicatedtothe servitorsthathis almost-untouchedpasta could be taken away. An equally unacceptableChicken Limone followed (again a wise choice—you wouldn't think they could screw it up, but theycan) and was tasted discreetly but not finished. Wolfe. I learned, doesn't care to raise his voice. Even in the yapping hell of Elaine's he kept to a soft, undemonstrativepitch. A sign of great social confidence. I thought. Listen, if you can hear me—if not, fine. I'm not—really I'm not—trying to impress. Conversation was possible all the same, because although Wolfe doesn't sparkle at all in person, he does take a polite interest in other members of the partyand he doesn't mind listening. He toldme that his new book, which is to be on high and low life in New York, would require studyingthe legal process a bit. When I quipped, "From Bauhaus to Bleak House," all I got from him was a pallid sifule. (I thought the line not bad for the spur of the moment, but then I feared perhaps he suspectedme ofhavingrehearsedit. He can have that effect.) He teased me a little about my participationinthe AmericanWritersCongress, the Nation Institute-sponsored gathering that has given rise to a fledgling union for scribblers. Wolfe did his dissertationat Yale on Communistmanipulation of the League of American Writers, a forerunner in the 1930s of today's union. But quite soon we were talking, the way people do, about writers we liked and disliked. I suppose I shouldhave guessed. His favorite novelist is Evelyn Waugh and his favorite essayist is Malcolm Muggeridge. The twin spheres of pseudoreligious pessimism and conservativism in British letters. I likethem,too, but as favorites, no. Wolfe. anyway, opines that history will remember American writers more and cites William Faulkner. Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck as exemplars.Bellow?I ask. Hemakes a slight but definitedownturn on thecorners ofhis mouth. Well, O.K. then, who else do you dislike? "Any1983 JANUARY 16 bodywho writesfor The New York Review of Books." A noticeable choice. this—the Review joins The New Yorker on his "out" list, These two liberalish bastionsare vulnerablein their way, but Wolfe doesn't mind appearing in Reader's Digest. When I inquire which amongst living authors he admires,he repeatshis fondness for MalcolmMuggeridge.Then, a bombshell."I reallylike Taki." This, as some readers will know, is the nom de plume ofTaki Theodoracopulos.a reactionary and a biliouslittle snobperhaps most notorious for his articles about "uglywomen" in The American Spectator. Taki thinks, and even thinks it cleverto say he thinks, that all feminists arephysically hideousand aremade so by their feminism.He was a practiced flattererofthe sorry set that hungabout the shah ofIran at Swiss ski resorts. He proselytizedfor the Greekjunta. He is a karate fan and likes to mention that fact in arguments. He is listed on the masthead ofthe NationalReview. He's not stylish. He's vulgar. I know him. I can't stand him. Nobody can. But Tom Wolfe admires his stuff. This is amazing. Or is it? People who find the urge for social change to be risible can seldom leave it at that. The Ayatollah Solzhenitsyn is not the first person to conclude, from bitter and intense experience, that the impulse for freedom and equality is a destructiveone, leadingonly to collectivistnightmares. He proposesa return totheocracyanddiscipline. TomWolfe, from what caliberofexperience I do not know, found radicalism laughablelong before he read or read about Solzhenitsyn. He has reaped fame and fortune from his slight but elegant talent for ridicule.Andhe proposes—what? Rule by Caspar Weinberger and William Buckley and Joseph Coors? The sense of proportion revolts, Some years ago, in Esquire, Wolfe publisheda piece about Vietnam that I think "places" him definitively. It is called "The Truest Sport: Joustingwith Sam and Charlie," and Wolfe remained fond enough of it to include it in his. recent volume of selected works. The Purple Decades. The "jousters" were the pilots who flew over Vietnamfrom the USS Coral Sea. "sAM"is the acronymfor surfaceto-air missile. You all know what "Charlie" meant. I'll have to quote from it at length here. MOTHER JONES he last time Dowd and Garth Flint were out was four days closeris sporting. Throughouthis tour ofduty on theCoral Sea, no matter how ago, Christmas Day, during bearish the missions became, Dowd the American Christmascease- seemedto maintainan almost athletic fire; and what a little tourist regard forform. excursion that was. They flew a photo run over Route JA in North Vietnam, This is vintage, authentic Wolfe. That his is entirely with came in under the cloud cover, right the sympathy engaged without saying. But pilots goes downon topofthe "Drive-In,"as it was noticehow he cannot help himself. The called,fiftyfeet from the ground, with Vietnamese have the effrontery to Garth taking pictures, and the Char- move around theirown country (during lies were down there using Christmas a merciful "American ChristmasceaseDay and the cease-fire for all it was fire"; this took place before the Christworth. The traffic jam at the Phun Cat mas bombing), and not content with ferry, going south to the Ho Chi Minh that, the "old geezers" are wearingthe Trail, was so enormous that they "inevitablepantaloons."They're imcouldn't have budged even if they properly dressed! Observe, also, the manner in which Wolfe thought Dowdwas goingto open up on Olympian down on the Asians, looks, literally, them. They craned their heads back like animals at theircarts while and stared up at him. He was down so tugging the F-4s cruise more fashionablyoverlow, it was as ifhe could have chucked head, manned bychapswith "an almost them under their chins. Several old athletic regard for form." (Don'tcha geezers, in the inevitable pantaloons, love the almost?) looked up without even taking their Andthen there's this. hands offthe drafts ofthe wagons they or two days they softened the were pulling. It was as if they were place up, working on the flak harnessedto them. The wagons were so sites andSAM sites in the most full ofartillery shells, it was hard tosee methodical way. On the third howone man, particularly so spindly a day theymassedthebombstrike creature, could possiblypull one, but the place apart. They there they were in the middle of the itself They tore its ripped open gullet. Theyput it out of general jam-up. the transport business. It had been a Now, that was a good hop—and Dowdso recorded it in hisjournal—an model operation. But the North Vietnamese noware blessedwith a weapon interestinghop, a nice slice ofthe war, that no military device knownto Amersomethingto talk about, but merely a ica could everget a lock on. As if by photo hop . . . and not a great hop. . . . in Hanoi . . . appears There was such a thing as a great hop, magic Harrison Salisbury! Harrison Salisandit was quite somethingelse. bury—writingin The New York Times about the atrociousAmerican bombing Youbet it was. For instance: the of hardscrabblefolk ofNorth VietSometimes, at night, when Dowd nam in the iron Triangle! . . . It would write on the back of his flight seemed as ifthe North Vietnamese were schedule, he'd make such entries as: playing Mr. Harrison Salisbury of The "Great hop! Went to Nam Dinh and New York Times like an ocarina, as if hosed down theflak sites around that they were blowing smoke up his pipe city. MiGs joined in the caper, but no andthefinger work wasjustright and one got a tally. Think lucked out in a the song was comingfirth betterthan last-minute bomb run. . . they could haveplayed it themselves. I could go on. Infact,I will,for another So! Thereyou have it. America was three sentences. stabbed in the back—thesame back it was fighting with one hand tied behind. The atmosphereof the great hop had A few lines later, Wolfe refers inevitasomething about it that was warlike bly to "some sort ofstrange collapse of only inthe sensethat it was, literally, a will power taking place back in the part of combat. A word that comes States." Of course—the will, acid testof T F I 1983 JANUARY 17 ELAINE THE GRUESOME ME- RANT IN NEW YORK. THE PERFECT SPOT FOR AN EVE- NING OF CML IRONIES. the reactionarydown the ages. I wrote earlier that Wolfe'sprose contained an undertoneofgrowl.This isone passage where the yellowing fangs are bared in full snarl. Reading Wolfe'switless echo of the pilots' euphemisms fortheirlethal busi- ness ("great hop," "hosed down," "racked up," "a nice slice of the war") and then reading The Right Stuff, it's difficult to avoid a speculationor two. Whether he is dealing with the men who leveled Vietnam or the guys who flung the Stars and Stripes into space, Wolfe clearly has a certain feeling for men of action. In Vietnam, they soften theplace up. They tear theplace apart. They rip open its gullet. In the space program, they drink hard, drive hard, womanizehard and the rest ofit. While MOTHER JON ES Wolfe, with his soft blond locks, his unlined skin and his white suit, is the mere observer of these "real men." Most male writers who have covered episodesof combat and endurance can control their vicarious macho, their feelingofpenisenvy. ApparentlyWolfe cannot. You might think that he would at least recognize the danger, because apart from making him look like an idiot, it has a reallydeplorableeffecton his prose. And his prose is, very often, very good. Some of the moments in The Right Stuff are superbly crafted. His vignette "The Invisible Wife," from In Our Time, is so painfullyetched that it makes you squirm. He can be funny, too, and his bulishit detector, though deaf in the right ear, is still acute. Where he fallsdown is in trying to be a social anthropologist. This is a well-known bogus moneyspinner, often employed by conservative behaviorists down on their luck. You begin to babble about orgasm as a sacrament, or about denims as a social uniform. From being a modest miniaturist, you become a pundit and then a full-dress blowhard and cultural censor. Wolfe showed incipient signs of this when he wrote "Mau-Mauingthe Flak Catchers." Ostensibly, this essay deals with the "games people play" when the people are minority recipients of welfare in San Francisco. Wolfe spends a lot of his time posingas an anthropologist here. (Ashe once wrote, in another resoundingly vacuous article, "Fashion, to put it most simply, is the code language of status." Brilliant.) Anyway, when in San Francisco he felt able to ing, singing hymns for a dose of soup. As for racial caricatures, make up hen everybody your own mind. Wolfe relieson them a started wearing the good deal, which I think to be a sign of Afros, it was hard laziness ratherthan prejudice.In"Radon a lot of older ical Chic," for instance, he remarks men who were los- three timesthat "moderate" blacks can by theirhabitof wearing their hair. They would grow it long be distinguished suits three sizes too big. If you can ing on the sides anyway and they would at are that, you easily amused. end up looking like that super-Toni on laugh In 1966, according to a story Wolfe is the Uncle Ben Rice box, or Bozo the very fond of telling about himself, he Clown.. participatedin a symposiumat Princeton. The other were droning O.K., fair enough, even if grammat- on about such panelists as topics government ically dubious. Then: repression and Gestapo tactics by the There were Spanish andOriental dudes police. Nettled by the prevailing who washed their hair every day with solemnity, Wolfe broke in to say: "What are you talking about? We're in Borax to make it11uffup andsit out. the middle of a . . . Happiness Explosion!" If anybody else had made this Maybe. Finally: inane remark about the '60s, he or she Whites didn'thave too muchfearofthe would have become the target of Mexican-American,the Chicano. The Wolfe's unsparing scorn. And he cannotion was that he was small, placid, not even have meant it himself. He didn't like the decade—he couldn't slow, no particular physical threat— have written "RadicalChic" otherwise, untilhegrew his hairAfro-style, talked or thetendencyof the Amerideplored like a blood or otherwise managed to can press to undermine the war effort. seem "black" enough to raise hell. It was simply his itch to be contrary, to Then it was a dfferentstory. be the performing flea, to say the unconventionalthing and to attract attenRemember, Wolfe is making this leap tion. "Happiness Explosion" was not (from one unkindand random observa- one of the quipshe made that was destionto a wholetheory in threestages) in tined to become a household term. order to showthat the poverty program ForWolfe,thepresent time is thereal is an incitementto gang solidarity. You HappinessExplosion.At last, thequalcould get the impression that Wolfe be- ity types are in power and all the tirelieves the welfare bureaucracy to be some old progressive jargon is being one great philanthropist. You could junked. Welfare officials don't exactly even get the impressionthat Wolfepre- grovel to the poor these days. Black fers his poor to be, if anything, descry- misery and discontent are scarcely in fashion. The history of the Vietnam Waris being rewrittenand recastnearer to theheart's desire. Youth is more and more reverting to conformity and careerism (or to unemployment). What venture the following: could be more agreeable than this joyouscounterrevolution,celebrated in a scoreofvapid Style sections? Theonly thing is, it doesn't give Wolfe much to be satirical about. Amid the dash and glitter of Ronnie'snewAmerica, Wolfe looks less like a performing flea than a rather moth-eaten court jester. The court jesterwhosetime has come. This downwardtrend in the economy is balancedbythis upward trend conceivedby our graphic art department" 1983 JANUARY 18 ChristopherHitchensis the Washington correspondentforThe Nationanda regular contributorto the London Spectator. His lastarticleforMother Jones was "AnthonyWedgwood Benn" (Nov. '81).