I hope you never get mad at me. Joanna
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The reason for nailing Tom Wolfe to a board was very complicated. It was a long and deep hatred that matured over many years actually. Back in the dim mists of time, mid-Seventies Wolfe wrote a nasty little debunking of modern art called the Painted Word. While all of it was quite funny, hard edged satire, its target, perhaps deserving ten years before, was by the mid-Seventies near death.
Haw, haw, your dead.
Wolfe's stylish arrogance was about as much fun as kicking the walker out from under an old with a stroke. There was something sad about it. But for popular dandies like Wolfe, well hell, why not shit on the painters. They can't write back. I guess you have to have been there to savor the bitterness of watching an art world die, while guys like Wolfe sat around laughing. I thought, laugh now assholes, you're next.
My old time painter friend (once upon a time, high end critic in the NYC art scene in 50-60s, see portrait) gave me Wolfe's Painted Word. By '75 Hub C was pretty far gone down the road of alcoholism, divorces, welfare, and a lost art career. He had paid dues many times over. But through his vodka haze he was always up for long discussions. Of course these discussion usually deteriorated, and I seem to remember we agreed after most of the bottle was gone, that Wolfe's problem was his dick was too small.
In other words, he didn't have the `stuff'. If he thought art such a joke, he should try it sometime.
Well, I let it go. What the hell. Who cares one way or another? Then when Bonfire of the Vanities came out in the late 80s (after Hub had died), I though okay jack-off, let's see what you've got going in fiction. You finally bellied up to the art bar. What are you drinking?
Every character was an wooden mannequin moved along its plot lines apace, like a complicated and ornate cuckoo clock---the gears turned, the pendulum swung back and forth, the whole circus drove straight into a wall and crashed. That was it. There was no more. A hack naturalist formula with a contrived end. Well, so there it was. Wolfe couldn't handle a novel. His dick was too small.
All the psychological profiles were copied straight from their advertising story boards, true to `type' as it were. And all without so much as moment of minor key, some space for reflection or nuance. Forget it. Wolfe wrote a Pop Art novel, without the smile.
So now you know why I nailed him to a board.
CG