VIDEO: Tom Wolfe, RIP - interview with Michael Moynihan

Thomas Kennedy Wolfe Jr. died yesterday at the age of 88. Farewell then, Tom Wolfe. With Ken Kesey (who was not not nearly so prolific) and Dr Hunter S. Thompson (who followed in your footsteps), you created and exemplified the New Journalism. You made us -- or me, at least -- see the realities of contemporary American society, the little things that everybody notices but pretends don't exist.

For half a century, you were a monumental figure not only in the English language, but also in the American culture. Through your eyes and your words on the printed page, you showed us the spirit of 50s (The Right Stuff), the 60s (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic: Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers), the 70s (The Me Decade), and the awful mid-80s (Bonfire of the Vanities, your best novel, IMHO).

Although I can never hope to grasp the English language as tightly as you did, I do try to emulate your style. OK, I "borrow" from you, occasionally. As the old saying goes, it's the sincerest form of flattery. I will remember you.

In a December 2012 interview with Michael Moynihan, Tom Wolfe discussed not just a forthcoming Newsweek cover story (on the 25th anniversary of Bonfire of the Vanities), but also class in America, why the Prez made life difficult for Jesse Jackson, what's wrong with the stock market and a host of other still-relevant topics. Running time 1:21:48.

Thinking about Charlie Hebdo: Kurt Vonnegut's views on freedom of speech and the role of the artist in society

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was an American writer -- one of Walt's favourite novelists. His works, such as Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973), blended satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. In spite of, or perhaps because of, his stint in the United States Army during World War II, he was until his death a committed pacifist. He was also a supporter of the ACLU and a crusader for not only freedom of speech but freedom of thought.

Kurt Vonnegut was born on 11 November 1922, eight years exactly after the Armistice that ended World War I. He dies on 11 April 2007, having lived through the Vietnam War and the first years of the Oil Wars or Gulf Wars or Wars Against Terrorism -- whatever you want to call them. I don't know if, prior to his death, he had ever read or even heard of Charlie Hebdo, but I imagine he would have applauded their lampooning of organized religion and secular sacred cows.

Back in 1973, Mr. Vonnegut was interviewed by Frank McLaughlin, for Media & Methods and by David Standish in Playboy, the magazine that men of my generation pretended to read. Perhaps we should have paid more attention when thinkers such as he cast pearls before us such as these comments about the role of artists -- writers, cartoonists and the like -- in our society.

From the Media & Methods interview:

I agree with Hitler and Stalin about a lot of things. Basic agreement with them and with...almost every dictator is that an artist should serve his society, and I would not be interested in writing if I didn't feel that what I wrote was an act of good citizenship or an attempt, at any rate, to be a good citizen.

What brought my ancestors over here from Germany was not oppression over there, but simply the attractiveness of the United States Constitution.... I was raised to be bughouse about the Constitution, and to be very excited about the United States of America as a Utopia. It still seems utterly workable to me, and I keep thinking of ways to fix it, to see what the hell went wrong, to see if we can get the thing to really run right.

[Now] I am heartbroken and confused.... I finally understand that I am not protected by the U.S. Constitution. I have never been protected by it, and it's only a piece of paper that we in America have always been dependent upon. The goodwill of those who govern us...that's all that has ever protected us....

We have entered a period now when our government doesn't really seem to like us much. I find this oppressive, and realize that the Constitution can't help much, can't help at all, really, if our leaders come to dislike us -- which they apparently do.

From the Playboy interview:

I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how a writer should serve. Mainly, I think they should be...agents of change. For the better, we hope....
We [writers] are expressions of the entire society.... And when a society is in great danger, we're likely to sound the alarms.

I have the canary-bird-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. You know coal miners used to take birds down into the mines with them to detect gas before the men got sick. The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam. They chirped and keeled over. But it made no difference whatsoever. Nobody important cared. But I continue to think that artists -- all artists -- should be treasured as alarm systems.

Walt suggests that, now that a dozen canaries have been killed by fanatics of a "deviant form of religion" (to use the Pope's words), perhaps the "leaders" of the Western world will hear the alarm and take some action beyond mouthing platitudes about peaceful coexistence and the brotherhood of man. Or perhaps not....

Source for these quotes: Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, edited by  William Rodney Allen (University Press of Mississippi, 1988).

So, there's a new bad English fad

So... since when has it become acceptable to start a sentence with "So..."?

Examples: "So... the stock market was up nearly 100 points today, in spite of large losses in the energy sector." That sentence was uttered by a supposedly educated business commentator on a TV newscast. But you hear it in everyday conversation too: "So... I'm walkin' down the street, eh, and this really big guy bumps into me..." Perhaps the speaker was not so well educated. [Certainly a Canuck! Ed.] Walt has even seen it in print (on the Net) in a post on a forum for... wait for it... English teachers! "So, I found a job in China, but now I changed my mind..."

My guess is that there has been so much criticism, on WWW and elsewhere, of the use of "like" as a "pause word" that people who wish to sound as if they've advanced beyond primary school have settled on "so" as a "higher-class" alternative. They must think "So..." sounds better than "Like...". It doesn't! So, let's stop using "So..." at the beginning of a sentence to signify, "Hey, I'm gonna talk now."

While I'm at it, may I plead, yet again, for the teaching of English vocabulary in journalism schools. Will those who write for the lamestream media please stop using words of whose meaning they are unsure! Examples:
"wrestle" for "wrest" - "The Iraqi army is trying to wrestle Tikrit back from ISIS"
"fulsome" for "full" - "A more fulsome report is expected tomorrow"

As Walt sees it, the problem is that "writers" no longer feel any need or to desire to be readers, first. They don't know less common words, like "fulsome" and "wrest", because they haven't read them, properly used, in the works of people possessed of vocabularies of more than 1000 words.

No, I'm not talking only about 19th-century writers, although Charles Dickens would certainly have known the proper meanings of "wrest" and "fulsome". There are plenty of modern writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, who have great (in the senses of "large" and "excellent") vocabularies. Looking at my bookshelf, I see: William F. Buckley, Bill Bryson, Graham Greene, Studs Terkel and of course Hunter S. Thompson. HST might not have used a word like "fulsome", but I'm sure he knew what it means.

Moral: Read first, then write.
Footnote: I except (not "accept") newsreaders from my criticism. They are only bingo-callers and meat puppets. They read only the autocue. The less-than-literate clods who write what's on the autocue are the real villains.