Radical Wolfe (2023) | Dir. Richard Dewey
Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
Text: Belle McIntyre
If there were an academic course on Tom Wolfe, and there is certainly enough material to warrant one, this documentary would be the Cliffs Notes on the man and his work. Based on a Vanity Fair article written in 2015 by Michael Lewis entitled How Tom Wolfe Became Tom Wolfe. It traces his origins in 1930’s Richmond, Va. Born into a comfortable middle class conservative family, he exhibited none of the characteristics which would certainly define his adult professional life. After Yale, he got a job as a beat reporter for the Washington Post. It was not a time of standout journalism. But that was soon to change as Wolfe’s creativity and originality began to overcome the business-as-usual form of non-fiction writing.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
He began to approach magazines with story ideas which he could fashion in his own inimitable style. In 1963 The Kandy-Colored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby was one of his earliest published collections of articles which included stories on esoteric, largely ignored American cultural activities, such as stock car racing, NASCAR, Las Vegas, and the race driver Junior Johnson, Murray the K and Phil Spector. These stories revealed the experience of observing the subjects he was writing about, as opposed to describing. His own delight in discovery comes across as well as his sharply honed sense of humor and irony. The spontaneity of the writing makes one feel as if they are hearing the words spoken contemporaneously.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
The 60’s were a period of unrest and unease as cultural and institutional norms were being challenged by young people who were experimenting with drugs and protesting the war and politics. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in 1968 chronicled a trippy cross country road trip with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters with such heady hilarity that it was wildly embraced. The reading of Radical Chic is breathtaking in its laser-like observations of the smallest, yet most-telling details, which gleefully skewer many of the characters, including Leonard Bernstein, the host of a fancy cocktail party for the Black Panthers in his glamorous apartment in the Dakota, mingling with New York’s well-heeled high society types.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
His writing did not endear him to everyone. It could seem too glib and callous. But the thing that was undeniable was the originality and agility with words which were a stunning delight. He was capturing the zeitgeist in a very visceral and vivid way and making a name for himself. This was a time of seismic changes in journalism as practiced by Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson, Truman Capote, George Plimpton, and Gay Talese which blurred the line between fiction and non-fiction techniques – collectively termed New Journalism. Tom Wolfe was credited with being in the vanguard. His colleagues all had mixed feelings about the perfect gentleman that he was in person versus the lethal wordsmith he could be on paper.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
There are televised and print interviews, reminiscences from his contemporaries and friends, as well as Lyn Nesbitt, his agent, his daughter, and various editors. Clips from television and magazine interviews trace his sartorial evolution as a personality and an easily recognizable dandy. His signature white suits, spats and hats became a signature uniform. He weathered the tides of social upheavals with his usual aplomb and continued to write until his passing at age 88 in 2015.
Many of his works are touchstones of their time in their specificity and iconographic references. Bonfire of the Vanities was his breakout fiction book and seemed to re-define New York City on every level. It is electrifyingly specific in its observations of experiences typical to New York city. I can never drive through the area of the South Bronx depicted in that book without a frisson of possible danger. His collected writings are a veritable time capsule of his/our times. I would take the course if it were offered. In the meantime, I am re-reading everything and loving it all over again.
