My Five Minutes with Tom Wolfe

As I shake the hand of the man in the white suit standing before me, all I can think is, “Oh my God, I am shaking Tom Wolfe’s hand and my hand is wet.”

My hand is wet because Wolfe makes me nervous.

He makes me nervous because to me, the 76-year-old author is a rock star, movie star and national hero rolled into one.

My love affair with Wolfe and his writing started when I was 13. I found my parents’ dog-eared copy of “The Bonfire of the Vanities” in the closet and opened it to read it. I loved it and I couldn’t wait to read more.

When I heard Wolfe would be in town as part of the Naples/Fort Myers Town Hall series at the Naples Grande Resort & Club, I knew I had to go.

The next thing I know I’m standing in a dimly lit hallway behind a banquet room at the Naples Grande talking to the skinny Wolfe, clad in his trademark white suit and sporting a navy tie covered in mini silver Floridas.

Katy Bishop, the reporter covering Wolfe’s speech for the Naples Daily News, and I had about five minutes of Wolfe all to ourselves before he walked out to speak to an audience of more than 300 at the hotel.

Katy wondered aloud if there was a story that man often credited with starting the “new journalism” movement thought that he had missed over the years.

“I followed Cassius Clay, who you might know as Muhammad Ali for five days before his fight against Sonny Liston. He was going through his Muslim indoctrination at the time and I didn’t pick up on it. That would have really made the story,” he said.

Then there are also stories he thinks aren’t being told by anyone.

“People hardly touch the subject of race or religion. Or when they do, they don’t really talk about it.”

When Wolfe talks, people listen. And, although we only had a short amount of time to talk to him, both Katy and I found ourselves completely absorbed by his stories. I didn’t get to half of my questions because I wanted to hear him speak.

He told a hilarious account of walking around with Junior Johnson when writing about stock car racing in a green tweed suit with a large black necktie, thinking that was what one wore to stock car races.

He told a story about the time he profiled Walter Cronkite and realized that the man who said he “ran everything” about his newscast didn’t run anything.

“A producer lined up the news. He was just a voice box,” he said.

Wolfe talks how I imagine most people think famous writers talk. With his Virginia drawl slipping out on some words, he uses incredible metaphors, like comparing the Bristol racetrack to the inside of a megaphone.

I asked Wolfe, who is famous for his observational abilities and once was accused of bringing a tape recorder to a party to tape guests (he didn’t), how he fine-tunes that skill.

“I don’t trust myself to remember dialogue,” he said, and revealed that he often takes notes in shorthand.

It is the combination of astute observations and meticulous note taking that have made Wolfe a living literary legend today. Wolfe, for his part, prefers the novelists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He speaks about Charles Dickens and Honoré de Balzac, both who wrote novels as serials for publications. Wolfe had a similar start in the journalistic world. During a New York newspaper strike, Wolfe approached Esquire Magazine about an article on California’s hot rod/custom car culture. The magazine story ended up being 40 pages and was eventually called “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.”

The story is also an example of “new journalism”, a term coined by Wolfe himself, that referred to a movement in journalism towards more literary writing that was popular in the 1960s

When asked if he realized he was part of what was a new journalism movement, Wolfe smiled and said “not completely.”

Wolfe admitted he liked the style of fellow New York Herald writer Jimmy Breslin and Gay Talese and wanted to write pieces like they were writing.

“People say I was one of the original founders of new journalism. I accept it, although there were other people doing it before me,” he said with a laugh.

My time with Wolfe was over far too soon as he heard himself being introduced for his speech. Still, no matter how short the time was, he reminded me why I became a writer in the first place. I became a writer because I love meeting people and sharing stories. And meeting Tom Wolfe is certainly a great story to tell.

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