How Did He Get Away With It?
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Tom Wolfe
https://www.city-journal.org/article/review-of-radical-wolfe
The documentary, Radical Wolfe, is a superb chronicle of his life and career, told through footage of Wolfe (who died in 2018 at the age of 88) expounding in his famous white suits. It features the Jon Hamm reading from Wolfe’s work along with interviews with his friends and enemies, his daughter, Alexandra Wolfe, and his fans, including Christopher Buckley, Niall Ferguson, Gay Talese, and Peter Thiel. Director Richard Dewey draws on the insights and research of Michael Lewis, who pored through the archive of Wolfe’s letters and papers for a 2015 article in Vanity Fair, “How Tom Wolfe Became . . . Tom Wolfe.”
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I think that the only thing I have read from him is "Bonfire of the Vanities". Been a long time, but I think I liked it. Maybe I should reread it.
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My first encounter with Wolfe was probably in 1970 or so - "Radical Chic" was the book. At my age, I was too ignorant/naive to catch much of what he was saying. My only recollection of the book was how Leonard Bernstein was upset about people pronouncing his name "Bernsteen."
I should revisit it.
"A Man in Full" is fun...well, interesting. So was "Bonfires."
Of course "The Right Stuff" is a masterpiece. The film was pretty faithful to the book, but it changed the overall premise. In Wolfe's take on the story, only Yeager (and other test pilots) had "the right stuff." The astronauts, the Mercury 7, were brave men, but they were fundamentally different from Yeager.
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I definitely want to see this.
I ran into Wolfe with my friends in South Beach one evening, 20-25 years ago. He sort of deconstructed us, or tried to.
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It was long enough ago that I don’t remember too many details. But he talked to us like he was describing us in one of his books.
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