Jeannette Cooperman in The Common Reader:
Tom Wolfe’s books are being reissued, in homage, by Picador. But he would never put the news so blandly.
WHOOSH! Off the press they come, slicked bright and hot, ready to be grabbed by woke undergrads in Lululemon who’ve never heard of him but have a vague sense—floated in between the clicks swipe-lefts and scrolled TikToks—that he might be an Influencer….
Ach. Wolfe would write his blurb far better, sweeping angst and desire into trends we have yet to name. He grasped the various ways we see and think, transcribed our slang, and spelled out the sounds that surround us. With a few choice words, he could nail a scene, a trend, or a decade. Sharply aware of class divisions, subcultures, and self-anointed elites, he pitted us against each other with such wit, we barely minded.
I have spent my adult life grateful to this man for loosening and livening up journalism, freeing us from that damned “inverted pyramid” (which frontloads all the facts in an ugly crush on the assumption that no one will read to the end) and the obligatory “nut graf,” placed early to tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em. He preferred suspense. An elegant trickster, he bent journalism toward the rhythms of literature.
Now I am wondering if, in the process, he killed democracy.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.