Tom Wolfe was the last of the all-American writers. He made a career of chasing interesting stories on American freedom for half a century. No one else has chronicled our amazing and fearful doings as well as he did, in novels, journalism, and books of reporting. It's not just that we won't see his like again, which seems inevitable as writing has lost its prestige, but we are in danger of misunderstanding him and so misunderstanding ourselves.
Wolfe judged himself and everyone else by popularity, not because he worshiped success, but because he believed the only reason to write is to let people know what's going on—it's the writer's job to get attention and reward it. Popularity is the literary equivalent of the consent of the governed. This matters, because we change presidents fairly frequently, and many leave us with a bad aftertaste—but writers can enjoy success for a long time and their reputations might last even longer. Nobody in our times deserves immortality as much as Wolfe, so let us work to confer it on him, which is the proper job of the critic.
Let us start from the fundamental thing. Wolfe elided the distinction between fact and fiction, since all his books read like novels with protagonists who endeavor and succeed, for better and for worse. Thus, he proved unusually alive to Tocqueville's teaching on modern poetry. People only care about the future now, and they want it described as someone's story. That's heroism in literature and that's how writers themselves can become heroes.
Writing such poetry takes courage, not just because a lot of America is fearful or boring, but because writers are usually morally crushed by the experience of American freedom. Comic writers feel that the headlines are more absurd than anything they can come up with; tragic writers feel that the hustle and bustle means that no one cares about suffering and nothing lasts. And then everyone's writing all the time, regardless of talent, insight, or craft. You need nobility to even try. But you also need to avoid bitterness at the injustices freedom is tied up with. Wolfe had these qualities and so is the rare author the reading of whose works is by itself a moral and political education. You will learn about America from him in a witty way. You come out stronger, if you learn anything, and have no one but yourself to blame if you refuse to learn.
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