[HN Gopher] Who's Afraid of Tom Wolfe?
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Who's Afraid of Tom Wolfe?
Author : lermontov
Score : 54 points
Date : 2025-03-04 18:04 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (commonreader.wustl.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (commonreader.wustl.edu)
| qoez wrote:
| I know negativity isn't encouraged on HN but man I do not like
| those covers (doesn't capture the world of Wolfe at all).
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test first ed. has a beautiful cover.
|
| https://i.etsystatic.com/22376946/r/il/968f38/2238228249/il_...
| jksmith wrote:
| In Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities," the main character, a
| lawyer, described the line of prisoners going into the back of
| the courthouse as "chow," as in chow for the system. I'll never
| forget that.
|
| Also, for anyone who grew up in Atl, Wolfe's book "A Man In Full"
| drips with the kind of delicious look-in-the-mirror satire home
| grown Southerners love.
| telesilla wrote:
| Netflix did a fine rendition of this, I enjoyed the turns of
| speech and intrigue.
| closeparen wrote:
| I can't find this, are you referring to the 1990 movie?
| ewujoku wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_in_Full_(miniseries)
| https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/a-man-in-full
| jraines wrote:
| the most dead-on part of the latter is when the main character
| is feeling a bit out of place at some meeting/hunting retreat
| in south Georgia and suddenly he remembers the cheat code: just
| talk about college football!
| brightball wrote:
| My dad taught me this at an early age and it was 100%
| correct. If you pay attention to enough college football to
| hold a conversation, you can talk to just about any man in
| the southeast US.
| jquinby wrote:
| Can confirm. Grew up in suburban Atlanta during the period
| depicted, including getting caught in the first big Freaknic
| blowout he describes. It's so dead-on it made me homesick.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >On the other hand, when someone demanded, "How could you know
| what he was thinking?" I always had a simple answer: "I asked."
| If someone had grilled Wolfe about _The Electric Kool-Aid Acid
| Test_ , they would have learned that everything he reported he
| had either seen or heard himself, found recorded elsewhere, or
| learned from people who were there.
|
| Relevant: TIL why Tom Wolfe wore a white suit. The pioneer of
| 'New Journalism' said that the unusual clothing caused others to
| see him as "a man from Mars, the man who didn't know anything and
| was eager to know", so talked freely to him. The white suit
| became Wolfe's trademark from 1962 to his death.
| <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1inpsa5/til_w...>
|
| >During Donald Trump's first term as president, _The Washington
| Post_ calculated that he had lied 30,573 times. Yet somehow it
| was the media who lost the trust of half the nation.
|
| The author isn't stupid. She answered the implied question above
| earlier in her essay, but can't outright say so, so has readers
| put two and two together with bits like:
|
| >There is a sameness in our silos now; I find myself over-careful
| when I voice any idea that does not conform to the slightly-left-
| of-center canon where I generally feel most at home.
|
| On the other hand, we get stuff like
|
| >"You know who's in charge of Voice of America now?" Wolfe's
| purported editor might snap. "Keri Lake, a right-wing election
| denier who called journalists 'monsters' and promised to be our
| 'worst nightmare' back when she ran for governor of Arizona.
| Trump posted her mandate on social: to 'ensure that the American
| values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World
| FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News
| Media.'"
|
| Besides the misspelling of Lake's first name, no mention of her
| having been a broadcast journalist herself for three decades. If
| Lake calls her colleagues "monsters", maybe she has some basis
| for said description?
| MetaMonk wrote:
| One time he came to talk at my school, and he spent the whole
| hour talking about sports.
|
| He demanded that we pay the cost for a private jet to transport
| him, as well as his hotel costs.
| cafard wrote:
| At this point I say, "Get your elbow out of my ribs. I'm not
| laughing because I don't get, I'm not laughing because it isn't
| that great."
|
| According to some USAF colonel whose stuff has been linked on HN,
| Wolfe got Yeager's crash wrong. According to those who inspected
| the capsule, Wolfe got Grissom's Mercury exit wrong. Is HN
| impressed by his take on Chomsky or Darwin?
|
| [edit] On the other hand Ken Kesey spoke well of him.
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