Dapper Dan has Died

The Dapper Dan of New Journalism has died.

Tom Wolfe passed away this week at the age of 88. He died, the New York Times says, from an “Infection in Manhattan.” That coy term could almost be the title of one of Wolfe’s books.

The sartorial resplendent Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr was the author of such books as The Right Stuff (his most commercially popular), The Bonfire of the Vanities, and my favourite: The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test.

Along with contemporary writers such as Truman Capote, Gay Talese and Joe Eszterhas, he created the Age of New Journalism.

New Journalism, AKA Gonzo, is the art and craft of reporting “facts” subjectively, by interpretation; injecting the writer, and vicariously the reader, into the story. Wolfe co-created it; it took Capote with In Cold Blood and Hunter S. Thompson with just about everything Thompson wrote to perfect it.

Wolfe’s writing was acerbic but rarely unkind. Unlike Capote, and Thompson for that matter, Wolfe never seemed to have the necessity to be unkind as he chronicled East and West Coast Society in America. He coined phrases for those societies such as “Radical Chic” and the “Me Decade.” America’s astronauts are still collectively known as “The Right Stuff.”

In fact, collectivising and stereotyping were about as tough as Wolfe got when writing about people, and that is no bad stuff.

However, Wolfe's ambitions and commercial success earned him enemies—big enemies. Norman Mailer despised him (nothing new there). So did Kohn Updike and John Irving. On the other hand, right-wing commentator William F. Buckley Jr called Wolfe “probably the most skilled writer in America.”

My view of Tom Wolfe is ambivalent. His writing style is often an inspiration to me, and when circumstances and publishers allow I try to replicate his New Journalism. Fryday often ventures there. However, particularly in his writing for Rolling Stone magazine, Wolfe’s flamboyant style often overtakes and diminishes the substance of his writing; then, his writing becomes like the white and cream suits he was known for—largely opaque.

So, Dapper Dan has died. I don’t feel saddened by that to the same extent I did when Thompson died…or Capote. And the reason I think is that the style he created, New Journalism, lives on—as it had to. If anything, it has been given greater credibility by America’s present president. New Journalism is today’s “Fake News”.

And for that Tom Wolfe has left us a great gift and legacy.
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