052 Electric Vanities transcript (Tom Wolfe)

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[00:00:00] Amit: This is Famous and Gravy, a podcast about quality of life as we see it one dead celebrity at a time. Now for the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

[00:00:11] Michael: This person died 2018, age 88. When he graduated from college in 1951, he had enough skill as a pitcher to earn a tryout with the New York Giants.

[00:00:25] Friend: Like Randy, what's his name, with the arm in Arizona,

[00:00:29] Michael: Randy Johnson, not dead, not 88 and 2018. He earned his PhD from Yale in 1957.

[00:00:37] Friend: Holy cow. This is gonna be difficult for me.

[00:00:39] Michael: In his use of novelistic techniques in his nonfiction, beginning in the 1960s, he helped create the enormously influential hybrid known as the new journalism.

[00:00:52] Friend: Oh, oh oh. It's not Truman Capote.

[00:00:55] Michael: Not Truman Capote. Someone said about him, quote, he has this unique gift of language that sets him apart. It is full of hyperbole. It is brilliant. It is funny. He has a wonderful ear for how people look and feel.

[00:01:11] Friend: What's the guy whose name is Gonzo Journalism? Hunter S Thompson it's not Hunter S Thompson.

[00:01:15] Michael: Ah, so close. He was almost as well known for his attire as his satire. He was instantly recognizable as he strolled down Madison Avenue. A tall, slender, blue-eyed, boyish looking man in his Spotless three piece vanilla bespoke suit, white suit.

[00:01:35] Friend: Tom Wolfe. Tom Wolfe. Tom Wolfe. Tom Wolfe.

[00:01:39] Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Tom Wolfe.

[00:01:43] Archival: Count how many days you think you have left. It's uh, rather, uh, grimly small. That number, you know, you tend to say thousands. It's quite humbling to know that. Despite all of your aspirations, all of your dreams, and all of the talents you think you have, you're made of clay for nothing, love, peace of crockery and a quarter of blood.

[00:02:17] Michael: Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

[00:02:21] Amit: And I'm Amit Kapoor.

[00:02:22] Michael: We are midlife, give or take, and we believe that the best years might lie ahead. So on this show, we study a celebrity who died in the last 10 years. We go through a series of categories in search of ingredients to life that we might desire and ultimately ask a big question, would I want that life today?

Tom Wolfe died 2018, age 88. Before we get to category one, I'm excited to say that once again, we're joined by Jennifer Keisha Armstrong. Jennifer. Hello. How are you?

[00:02:57] Jennifer: I'm great. I'm excited to be with you here again.

[00:03:00] Michael: We are very happy to have you here again. So for listeners who don't know, Jennifer is a journalist and a television and culture historian.

She also wrote a book called When Women Inverted Television, which featured Betty White as a central figure. I sent you a short list of dead celebrity names. Tom Wolfe, today's Dead Celebrity, was on that list and you wrote back and said, he inspired my entire career. Also, please explain the white suits.

We'll get into the white suits in a minute. How did Tom Wolfe inspire your entire career?

[00:03:34] Jennifer: He sort of popped up in my life at the right time. I was in my early twenties. I was a local daily newspaper reporter, which is not a glamorous job at all in journalism, and definitely wanted sort of more than that for my foreseeable future.

And when I, I believe I read electric Kool-Aid acid test first, but then I just devoured all of them as a 20-something can do. And I was so excited, especially by his non-fiction, because that sort of gave me this path forward of, oh, I could write, you know, novelistic. Scenes and stories and entire books using the skills that I learned in journalism school and at newspapers.

I don't have to be covering city council meetings forever. And there was something I thought particularly inspiring about his style. It's very flashy and so I think that particularly captured my imagination at that particular time. And since then, I don't think I would wanna write exactly like him. I don't think anyone could.

But he really has kind of been this like beacon in my life where, you know, I kind of tried to figure out, given what I write about, how could I be a little more like

[00:04:47] Michael: him? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot in there that we're gonna get to. And I love that you responded to that. I do think he's a little bit more obscure, I guess.

We'll, let's get into it. Category one, grading the first line of their obituary, Tom Wolfe. An innovative journalist, a novelist whose technol, wildly punctuated prose brought to life the worlds of California surfers, car customizer astronauts, and Manhattan's money status seekers in the works like the candy colored tangerine flake, streamlined baby, the right stuff and bonfire of the vanities died on Monday in a Manhattan hospital.

He was 88. Jesus Christ. That is a long sentence. That

[00:05:32] Amit: is, that is a very Tom Wolfe sentence. Fuck me. I bet he write his

[00:05:36] Michael: own first line. Okay. There's a lot in here, Jennifer. Your initial reaction. I'm a little

[00:05:43] Jennifer: surprised we went candy colored instead of electric Kool-Aid. Um, I agree with the right stuff, wholeheartedly and definitely bonfire.

I think you gotta go with the novels and you gotta go bonfire, but. It's a little weird.

[00:05:58] Amit: Wholeheartedly agree. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. That's not just us though. I mean that, I think all the data shows that electrical AAC test was the breakthrough.

[00:06:05] Michael: Well, I do think the candy colored, tangerine flake streamlined baby put him on the map in a certain way.

If you, did you, did you guys come across that, uh, Michael Lewis article and Vanity Fair about him? Yeah, I did. We'll link to it in the show notes. I mean, it's worth the read, and he certainly describes that as being the breakout moment in Tom Wolfe's career. However, I'd never heard of it before doing the research.

Electric coolaid acid test is to me, a. Certainly in on the same level as the right stuff, and Bonfire

[00:06:34] Jennifer: electric Kool-Aid is iconic. When you think of Ken Kesey and the Mary Pranksters and the bus, and like, I mean, this was just referenced on an episode of Ted Lasso. Like that's, and I do not think Ted Lasso like next week is gonna reference candy colored.

Like, I just don't

[00:06:51] Amit: think that's gonna, it's, I mean, it's bio, it's, it's one of the most definitive accounts of the 1960s in America. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the most definitive account.

[00:06:59] Michael: Exactly, yes. This is argued as like the great 1960s non-fiction novel for Christ's sakes. I mean, this feels like one of those where maybe the.

Obi writers were saying, gosh, it's either gotta be candy color, tangerine flake, and just like agonized over and then made a stupid wrong decision. It's like you're trying to put on two shirts and you put on the wrong one and, and you get to the party and you're like, fuck. I was

[00:07:21] Amit: right the first time. I think we have an anti-drug obituary writer cuz they, they omitted it twice cuz they in the list of the subcultures and then again in the list of the

[00:07:29] Michael: titles.

Yeah. It, it's a, it's a super weird decision. I'll tell you the other omission that I see in here, they don't mention the white suits. Mm-hmm. I mean, his commitment to the white suits, it, it wasn't like he only dressed up that way for the photo shoots. It sounded like that's what he put on every day. You know, basically from the mid sixties onward, maybe he's got a pair of gym shorts lying around somewhere.

But, um, it's a little hard to picture, right. Uh, but I don't know, maybe that was the right move not to include the reference to the white suits in the first line of the O bid, because it's not clear what it means other than it's just so recognizable. But I think if the first line of the O bid is like what you know him for, Then I kind of feel like that might belong too.

Or at least there's a case for it. Yeah,

[00:08:12] Amit: as an adjective, right? The white suited journalist and novelist. Yeah. Not different. It's not,

[00:08:17] Jennifer: I mean, there's so much happening here already. That's my only concern. I, I wish we could streamline the other stuff, but I agree. Because like to me, the iconic things about him are like new journalism, wild pros, white suits.

That's what I would boil it down to, but they really had quite a bit in that sentence already. So maybe an editor got rid of that. I don't

[00:08:40] Amit: know. But if you have 400 words, what's like

[00:08:43] Michael: 402? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good point. It's a good point. What's the, what's the, what's the cost at this point if you're really going for it?

Doma, your joke was this o bit written by Tom Wolfe actually kind of does feel a little bit like that. It doesn't have ellipses and exclamation points, but otherwise it feels like it's. Tom Wolfe written Tom Wolfe obituary. Yes.

[00:09:05] Jennifer: It would've been better with ellipses and exclamation points. I would just like to point out, yeah, that like the reason his long sentences work is partly the punctuation.

Like I want white suits,

[00:09:15] Michael: exclamation points,

[00:09:18] Amit: fun,

[00:09:20] Jennifer: the subcultures, any of that. I think, you know, I actually think you needed a break in there somewhere. You had to read that out loud, so. Okay.

[00:09:28] Michael: Let's talk about what's working. Innovative journalists is a very good phrase, technol, wildly punctuated prose.

Brought to life. I, I like that there is a adventurousness in his writing. Mm-hmm. And, and an excitement about it. Technol also is kind of a nice word in terms of placing him in a cultural moment. I think that was kind of clever. So I'm, I applaud that. I agree with that. I like that too. And then, you know, we at least agree with two outta three of the works, but they also got in, this is who he writes about, California surfers, car customizer astronauts, and Manhattan's moneyed status seekers.

That's hyphenated. I really like that. They got in status seekers. He talks about this a lot. Across cutting theme of his work is a sort of sociological view of humans as status seekers. They're talking about it specifically in reference to bonfire here, monied status seekers. But I actually am impressed that they managed to get that phrase in there.

I feel like that's kind of important. Yeah, I

[00:10:28] Jennifer: like that. I agree cuz I, I think about that a lot too, that he's talked about that the choices he makes are mainly, he looks for signifiers of status. Yeah. When he's

[00:10:37] Michael: describing. Right. And they also said who's innovative journalistic and novelist. So they did get the two halves of his career in here.

So there's some things that are working, I don't know, they

[00:10:47] Amit: didn't do a ton for the second half though. Bonfire of the vanities was the first fiction, but there were what, like four to follow it?

[00:10:54] Michael: Yeah. Which no nod to I'm okay with that personally. Uh, should we grade this thing? Ahma, do you have something else you wanna say?

No, I'm ready to grade. Okay. Well why don't you go first? What do you got? Okay, I'm gonna go

[00:11:06] Amit: six. Okay. So I like the adventurousness in taking the Tom Wolfe style run on sentence. I like the avant garde of that. I think we're all unanimous decision of why the f not electrical aid acid test, but I'm adding a point back for technical.

I like that cleverness. So, uh, yeah. All ends at a six. Jennifer, where are you at?

[00:11:26] Jennifer: I was gonna say six two and I, for similar reasons. I like the first half. Things get a little crazy in the second half, and I even wonder a little, if you needed to tell us the subcultures in addition to the titles, if the titles are so iconic.

Yeah, maybe we know that already and maybe that's a place you can win back some breaths. So that, that would be my take.

[00:11:48] Michael: I went seven, I think this is a really hard one. I think that's why I'm bumping it a notch higher. I think that how you know who Tom Wolfe is and what you should know him for in 1965 and then in 1980 and then in 1995 and then when he dies in 2018, it's kind of a moving target and it's a little hard to capture for the audience when he finally does die.

So I'm definitely docking points for not including electrical aid acid test. But I don't know. I feel like the challenge here is so substantial because I think a lot of people have no idea who this guy is, and there is something so. Complex and exciting about the first line of this OB bit that you want to read on and learn who he is.

So it has my attention in a way that I'm gonna give a pass and give it seven.

[00:12:39] Amit: You're being nice. We had the Betty White conversation just like three episodes ago when Jennifer was last on. Yeah. And we were like, oh, this is a gigantic, wide-ranging career, which they seem to. Kind of encapsulate pretty well.

Yeah. And here you are saying like, oh, this is a big job. I'm gonna give 'em some extra points. Cuz it was hard.

[00:12:56] Michael: Are you docking me for not being consistent episode to episode on Famous? Well, if I opened that camera, this is a mood based show, sir. I

[00:13:05] Amit: would be destroy, I would be annihilated if we started doing that.

Fucking I

[00:13:09] Michael: can't be consistent. Consistent Episode.

[00:13:10] Amit: Episode. I never, I don't know who I'm, humanity is not consistent. I think that's the point of this. Exactly. It's, it's in patterns and ways,

[00:13:16] Michael: but overall there's detectable things and I'm standing by my seven. Let's move on. Jennifer, before you leave us, I would love for you to give us one thing you love about Tom Wolfe, uh, as we move on to category two.

Five things I love about You here. We come up with five reasons why we love this person, why we wanna be talking about them in the first place. Jennifer, what do you got?

[00:13:36] Jennifer: I'm going super easy, at least to me, which is his writing style. We've already kind of touched on this. Which tells me how important it was, right?

It's like white suits and this particular style that he had. You know, I always call it kinetic. It's a very propulsive. It's exciting. Like I said, it captured my imagination when I was like a young adult and it was also very freeing to see this guy doing this effectively. And I went like, oh, there's so much more I could be doing.

I'm not gonna go as far as he does. But I've always even felt like I become a little better writer. I become a little more exciting and adventurous just when I happen to be reading him, because it's like, you know, his voice is so clear and it sticks in your head, and it made me kind of feel like, oh, I can do so much more.

And I, I can't think of a ton of writers who can really do that to a person who can actually kind of like change the way you think about what you do and give you a wider. Path to work with. For me, that was what was so inspiring about him. I didn't even know about the white suits at first. You know, I only knew this and he really captured, I think, you know, I don't know if it if he would say it came out of the time that he was like, at the top of his game, but, you know, c you know, the sixties, it was like the perfect way to encapsulate kind of the way things were going haywire.

And, um, I really dig that. And that is, I did really like technicolor in the, um, obi and that's, that's what I would apply here

[00:15:03] Michael: too. So, but I mean, I guess what I'm hearing that it's not just the specific style and, and what he's doing sort of on a technical level, it sounds like to me, you're also talking about attitude, you know, like yes.

What the mentality he gets into and the like, just like, I don't know, sense of freedom that he brings to the page when he does it. That's

[00:15:20] Jennifer: exactly right. And I, something I really respond to in writers is confidence, and this is definitely confidence. He's doing a bunch of stuff you're not supposed to be doing and he's like, this is the way it is.

Like I can't imagine like what conversations he did or did not have with editors. I would love to know and to me it leads into the entire rest of all, everything I'm sure you all are gonna talk about with his career, the ways that he would kind of write about whatever struck his fancy and he'd find all these cool stories to tell and take his time with them and do them right and do them big.

And to me that all goes together.

[00:15:57] Amit: Hmm. Jennifer, I have a question. So one thing about his writing style that's very different for me as a reader is when I've read his stuff, the voice that comes in my head is not my own. It's an outside narrator. And to, whereas I read most novels or most things, I'm reading them, you know, in my head, in my own voice.

But the way that he uses all those punctuations and all those crazy ellipses or, or alternate caps or whatnot, it's like somebody else entirely is narrating it inside my head.

[00:16:26] Jennifer: I hadn't thought of it that way. But I think that that is a huge thing. It's like presumably him, right? He that's correct. Is actually, he's so distinctive that you, your brain knows that it's not you.

It's a really weird way to say it, but, um, you, your brain immediately gets that it's him and all the books I have loved, I love a really strong voice. Some people don't, some people don't like him at all for this reason. He's like big and present and there the whole time. And that was something that I really liked and I loved the idea of getting a little closer to that, even if I don't go as big as he does.

[00:17:01] Michael: That's really well said. Well, Jennifer, are you giving us a ton to talk about? Thank you again for coming on the show. It's so much fun to have you and I'm sure we'll do it again soon. I appreciate thing number one and, uh, you weighing in on the op bit. Of course.

[00:17:13] Jennifer: This was so much fun. As always,

[00:17:15] Michael: a phrase pops into the head of Edward t topping to the fourth from out of nowhere.

Everybody, all of them, it's back to blood. Religion is dying, but everybody still has to believe in something. So my people that leaves only our blood La Rasa as the Puerto Ricans cry out, the race cries the whole world. All people, all people everywhere have but one last thing on their minds, back to blood.

In all of American letters, only one writer could have produced that passage. With us today,

[00:17:45] Amit: Tom Wolfe. Should we take this moment to describe Tom Wolfe a little more for those that he's new to?

[00:17:53] Michael: Yeah, I guess so. And how would you do this? I mean, that's party why?

[00:17:57] Amit: That's why I brought it up because I think what Jennifer said is the perfect Andre to that and Okay.

What he is known for, and we'll probably go down in history for, was kind of inventing this new style of writing, which was collectively called New journalism. And it's basically writing either journalism or non-fiction in the same style that you would write. Fiction.

[00:18:17] Michael: Yeah, right. A novel using novelistic techniques.

Yeah, correct.

[00:18:20] Amit: You take non-fiction things or typically journalistic things in which you are an observer and describer, but you use, I read this once, you use the novelist bag of tricks as things like seen by scene, construction, use of dramatic dialogue, vivid characterization, shifting points of view, so on and so forth.

So he was the pioneer of that. And with that, he was sort of crowned as the perfect describer of decades and movements in subcultures, in genres for the sixties onward.

[00:18:52] Michael: This is called new journalism and it's sort of an unfortunate term. Tom Wolfe actually writes a book called New Journalism. I managed to get a copy at Half Price Books, you know, so I, I, I went down the new journalism rabbit hole a little bit and.

You know, I also, I referenced earlier the Michael Lewis article. You know, he sort of says like, is new journalism a thing or is it so ingratiated that we don't even need a term for it anymore? I do think that there is that impact on writers like Jennifer and others, but is that what he's gonna be remembered for?

I mean, I actually think these books, uh, I don't think he's gonna necessarily gonna be remembered for a style so much as like the actual books themselves. I, if anything,

[00:19:33] Amit: you know, so if I'm gonna put it as simply as possible, he made nonfiction fun.

[00:19:38] Michael: Yeah, I agree with that. And, and if you go and say like, who did he influence?

The names you come up with are people like Michael Lewis, Chuck Klosterman. Malcolm Gladwell. I mean, there's a whole generation of popular writers who you know are kind of picking up the torch that was lit by Tom Wolfe and others associated with this idea of new journalism. But I guess like, is that the reason to care about him and to do have him on Famous and Gravy?

I mean, my personal bias was actually the same one Jennifer mentioned. I read Electric Koolaid Acid test in my early twenties, and I thought, holy shit, what an incredible book. It just lit my brain on fire. It was so exciting. Not just the story itself, but certainly the way it was told, and that led me to other Tom Wolfe books.

But I don't know. I mean, why did you want to do this episode? Am.

[00:20:29] Amit: He's as important of a figure as anybody else that we've done, especially in the entertainment category because he is in books, which is a, a smaller microcosm of pop culture, but his actual contribution influence in everything that we see today and so many things going forward is equivalent to that of a Dick Clark or a Gary Shandling, or a David Bowie or all of these people that we've covered.

His style was just in something that's consumed less because books are hard and they're pain in the ass

[00:21:00] Michael: sometimes. Yeah, they're right. Not everybody reads. I mean, this is definitely. A Smarty Pants kind of episode perhaps, or risks being there. I actually like that you

[00:21:09] Amit: brought that up a ton because I think he is a little bit of the antis smarty pants.

Uh, he is because he is a writer. Yes. Yeah. And so by default you make you write books for living or you're an article writer. You are in this smarty pants genre. He's

[00:21:25] Michael: also a scholar. He's also a scholar. His PhD is in American Studies. Really matters here, I think.

[00:21:31] Amit: Correct. Yeah. But he definitely is not in like highbrow literature.

[00:21:37] Michael: Yeah. You know, he's, anybody can read 'em. Anybody

[00:21:39] Amit: can read 'em. Yeah. He's, he is, he is essentially writing H B O series, but they just happens to be in books.

[00:21:44] Michael: Yeah, that's true. I agree with that. Well, all right. We've got four more things supposedly. I'd love for you to take number two. Okay, so we talked

[00:21:52] Amit: about books, but I wanna talk about words.

So number two, he invented words. So he's credited with a lot of things of coming up with phrases that are used very commonly today. So the ones that are very often cited are Radical Chic, which was title of collection of his essays, the Right Stuff, obviously the name of the movie, but that became a bit of a household phrase.

Oh yeah, that sort of, but it kind of went away. I think that that's,

[00:22:15] Michael: The right that's used. Oh, no, I think that's still kind of way that, I mean, it's a little bit of a throwback, but he's got the right stuff. I, I feel like if you hear that on the street, you know what it means. Yeah. Or you, you have an idea what it means.

Yeah. It's not, it's not alien. Yeah. Okay.

[00:22:27] Amit: So, but now, now my personal favorites, what he invented or at least claims to have invented or used for the first time. The phrase Good old boy I saw that credited with Tom Wolfe, used in a description of NASCAR in the sixties that he did, uh, the phrase balls out.

Really? I didn't know that one. First Used in electric Kool Aid acid test still, I mean, fortunately or not still widely used today. Credit with Tom Wolfe. What? Uh, and lastly from Bonfire The Vanities. Forget about it. Yeah. Written as a one word with the F u h g G E D, this like New Jersey

[00:23:02] Michael: style. Forget about you.

Forget about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That

[00:23:04] Amit: is a word he invented. What's, forget about it.

[00:23:09] Michael: Forget about it. It's like, uh, if you agree with someone, You know, like Raquel Welch's one great piece of ass. Forget about it. But then if you disagree, like a Lincoln is better than a Cadillac, forget about it. Mm-hmm. But then it's also like, if something is the greatest thing in the world, like minutos peppers, forget about it, you know?

But it's also like saying go to hell too. Hey, bully, you got a one inch pecker and bully says, forget about it. Forget about it. Bully, forget about it. Sometimes it just means, uh, forget about

[00:23:49] Amit: it. I love this minor invention, uh, thing. Yeah. You know, it's like, okay, I can, you can invent and you can spend your entire career being Elon Musk and leave with these inventions, or you can just come up with a few phrases that go and stick on forever.

And I love that they were not his core product, but these are the things that may last for a long, long time. Good old boy may never go away. And I love that contribution of legacy because I think we're all. Doing it in some way. You know, we look at legacy and like what I create, what you created, what you invented, what you put out there.

But you also, there's little things that are within your style, in your way of speaking that carry on and whether they're in lexicon or mannerisms or whatnot, and they may be something that, that you uniquely use, but it's really your contribution into the universe and I think it's a phenomenal thing. To love because I think everybody does it in some way.

[00:24:44] Michael: Yeah, I agree with that. I do wanna add three more that were left out. Pushing the envelope is something that astronauts would talk about. And uh, same thing with screwed the pooch is, uh, uh, something that came from astronaut vernacular. The biggest one that you didn't mention is the me decade. Uh, to, oh yes.

To like label the 1970s. Anyway, I, so all of this is just additive to what you're saying. I wholeheartedly agree that it's something that we're doing all the time as sort of workshopping language, how we're describing the world, what phrases kind of catch on. And in one way, and I think you've used the phrase several times on our show culture making, I mean, what you're really talking about is like, it's sense making and culture making in a way that I think is, is an exciting thing to be doing in, in professionally.

Or in our lives and is highly desirable. So, uh, I couldn't agree more. And

[00:25:35] Amit: lemme let me add a data point to this. So, uh, at last count in the Oxford English Dictionary, there are 150 references to Tom Wolfe's work as explanations of words.

[00:25:46] Michael: Bravo. I love it. All right. I think I'm gonna be a little bit simpler here.

I'm gonna say for my thing number three, I really like this job. Okay. You know, one of the things that's come up a lot on our show is actually I. I don't want to be famous. Not really, but there's still a kind of small part of me that does. Cause I want validation and recognition, and I'm just as flawed and human as the next person.

So I don't actually want all the trappings that come with fame, but there is a part of us that still aspires for popularity and recognition. Right? Something that I think over the previous 51 episodes is that I know I do wanna be creative, and I think that there's a real tension with creativity and fame sometimes.

Like whatever creative endeavor you might commit yourself to acting or music or even, you know, the creative art of politics or sports. I like those endeavors. I like those activities. I do desire those jobs a little bit, but I don't really want to be famous. I like this kind of fame. I like authorship fame.

I like the anonymity and privacy that he was able to choose. He didn't because he wore these white suits all the time. But I also kind of like, The culture making behind the scenes and a little bit hidden from view. So that's one part of the job. The other part of it is he engages in a lot of really different, Curiosity driven projects.

He hangs out with Ken Kesey, who wrote, you know, one Floor over the Cuckoo's Nest and his Gaggle of Mary Pranksters in the early sixties when L S D is taken off. That's an interesting scene for Bonfire to the Vanities. He is on, you know, the Bon Trading floor. He visits Wall Street, he visits, you know, the courtroom to go there and observe.

Sounds like fun, certainly like getting to know the astronauts, uh, at Edwards Air Force Base and so on. Like each of these projects has kind of fun attached to it and curiosity attached to it that like the day-to-day of the job looks pretty fun. I do think the hard part is actually writing, so I don't know that I love that piece of it, but in terms of making a career out of a creative endeavor, I like this job.

Yeah,

[00:28:01] Amit: and I think the way he did it, the word that I think you didn't use is immersive, right? So he would go and like live in these cultures and amongst them for weeks, months, years at a time in order to perfectly capture it, to write either the non-fiction or fiction book. And so I think about it as like he gets to basically just live these several lives in one.

It's equivalent to almost being a travel writer. You go there and you describe this place in which you have spent significant amount of time in and that other people have not seen. No one will argue like, Hey, I'd love to be a travel writer. But to me, that is exactly what Tom Wolfe got to be.

[00:28:39] Michael: So that's my thing, number three that I love about him.

What do you got

[00:28:42] Amit: from number four? I am going to say the pivot, the subtle pivot from this invention of new journalism in writing nonfiction to what we talked about a lot with Jennifer, was bonfire of the Vanities. In 1987, he became a fiction writer, and from then on wrote novels. And I think there were four subsequent ones, all varying degrees of, of success, but all pretty huge successes.

So in 1987, at the age of him, he was almost 50 years old. He changes essentially his entire career. And I think to an outsider or to anybody, it seems like okay, you're just, you're a writer and you continue to be a writer. But what he did was actually very drastically different. He completely changed what he did for a living at the age of near 60 years old and was wildly successful at it.

And this is like, you know, this isn't to me exactly like Dylan goes electric. Like this is like Will Smith going from being the fresh Prince to being Will Smith. Which I think is awesome to be able to pull off that late stage in

[00:29:45] Michael: career. I think there's a couple things that go into that. As I read the story.

One, this is very well documented, he had some pretty critical things to say about existing novelists. One of your,

[00:29:56] Amit: uh, the people you call, um, the

[00:29:58] Michael: Three Stooges, uh, named John Updyke, not just John Updyke, but also Norman Mailer, uh, and John Irving. So this came at some risk to do something fiction, but he also does talk about it as being sort of journalistic in orientation, even if he's doing fiction, right?

Correct. That he did spend time in essentially reporting on Wall Street and on the criminal justice system in New York in the eighties in order to write bonfire to the vanities, the writing programs where you get the masters of fine art and writing. Um, always telling people to write what you know, and, and students interpret that to mean your own life.

I'd be out with a cup if I had to write. Surely what's based on my own life for the way I wanted to write a novel, I had to go out and do reporting just like the reporting that I did for the right stuff, uh, for the electric Kool-Aid asset test or anything else that I had written. So, okay, so what was the language exactly you used for your thing number four?

I said the pivot. I think that's a good way of encapsulating it and I think like in some ways it is a natural extension of previous things, but it is also a very new thing to have done, you know, at age 57 and incredible that it was successful at it. For my number five, I wrote down powers of observation and I think that is absolutely part of what I love about this job.

I think it also gets at what you said in terms of generating new language, but for me I was also thinking about it more in the vein of sense, making the only other. Profession that I can think of where powers of observation are. So primary is comedians. One of the things we love about comics is how much they point out what's hiding in place at sight and make us laugh at the truth of what's evident and that what we should all recognize.

I think that Tom Wolfe is funny and part of the reason he's described as a funny writer. It's just in like an ability to notice that things that are hiding in plain sight. I really wish I had that more to question, to pull back veils, to look at what people are doing, how people dress, how people are vying for status in any given situation.

What the

[00:32:18] Amit: hell are you talking about, Michael? This is what, this is our show. Like obviously you have some ability in that.

[00:32:25] Michael: Well, okay, fair enough. I I, I, I do think I'm, uh, uh, You're, you're right. And that was the most backhanded of backhanded compliments I've ever gotten. Um, but, uh, but I'll take it. You're right.

But he could do it at scale. Uh, he could do it at a level of, wow. How come nobody saw this before Tom Wolfe saw it? You know, I think our show's great man. But I do think that there's a incisiveness to his powers of observation that is just at a 10, outta 10 level. That I admire

[00:32:55] Amit: and desire. Again, I can't hammer it into you enough that's exact, like Tom Wolfe is if, if he is responsible for the same things that you said about Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis and Chuck Klosterman.

Yeah. It's the same thing that he's responsible for this show. He's like us being able to take real nonfictional lives and retell them in a way that is entertaining and where you can pick up on subtleties to where you take that entertainment and you actually glean it into something that's perhaps useful or beneficial to your own life.

You dissect it yourself, but it's in the power of observation in the retelling of that story, which is what exactly we're trying to do right here. Yeah. That Tom Wolfe opened the

[00:33:34] Michael: door for. No, you're absolutely right. And as soon as you said it, I see it. Uh, all right. Should we recap? Yes. All right, so thing number one from Jennifer was writing style and writing attitude, especially with confidence.

Thing number two, you said the invention of words. The invention of words, thing number three, I wrote the job thing. Number four, you said Career pivot. Career pivot, and thing number five, powers of observation, which we're working on in real time. Yes. All right. Category three, Malkovich Malkovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malkovich, in which people can take a little portal into John Malkovich mind and have a front row seat to his experiences.

This is kind of simple, but this is important to me and in a funny way, I think builds on what we were talking about before. 1964 is when Tom Wolfe takes an interest in Ken Kei and the Mary Pranksters. By this point, Ken Kesey has written, one Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and sometimes a great notion, but he's also becoming more of an evangelist for L S D.

Tom Wolfe goes out to meet him. They connect, and Tom Wolfe ends up following. Neil Cassidy, Ken Kei, the Mary Pranksters for about a month or so, and he's there in his white suit and he very famously did not take l S D with the pranksters. This has come up a lot. People have asked, did you, uh, take acid with the pranks, Mary pranksters?

And he said, no. However, the book doesn't come out until 1968 and during that time, he does make the decision, if I'm gonna do justice to this book, I need to know what L S D is all about. I'm gonna give it a shot. He doesn't talk a lot about his personal experiences with it. I saw this in a few places that he observed the intricate details and colors of a carpet, and it seemed to become significant and alive.

The carpet appeared to be a complex tapestry of meaning and symbolism. You know, he did experience enhanced pattern recognition. I think that the way he represents L S D in the early sixties as the, and the youth movement and what will come to be a kind of almost new religion, at least as it's described in the electric Kool-Aid acid test.

He, he's, he's really balanced in a way, in, in terms of not being judgmental and not signing off on it. If you go back and read the electric Kool-Aid acid test, and it's interesting to me that he's able to report on the way that L S D is affecting all of these young people and then he takes it himself.

There's no way, it wasn't a profound experience, but I feel like he also is able to maintain some sort of distance, and I don't know, objectivity for one of a better term, in terms of why L S D is so unbelievably important to these northern Californians and to the youth movement overall. I wanna know what's actually going on in his mind when he is tripping.

I wanna know what he's go, what's going on. I wanna, I wanna know, uh, how he's reflecting on his memories of spending time with the Mary Pranksters. What else he's looking at in his own life. I mean, L S D is such an unbelievably difficult experience to describe, but it's almost always profound. He does it out of journalistic curiosity, but, I want to know how that did or did not affect him because the way he treats his own personal relationship to L S D is almost, doesn't say anything about it, and it's kind of remarkable if you go back and read that book.

[00:37:22] Amit: Yeah, because the, I mean the, although so much of the book is about, like this tr about how this subculture saw, this saw L s D as this huge transformative

[00:37:30] Michael: thing, awakening, right? This grand awakening that was like about to descend upon America. And in some ways he literally changed the

[00:37:37] Amit: trajectory of the

[00:37:38] Michael: universe.

You know, how does he see that? Like what, what it's, what's his take on L S D haven't done it himself, and he, he doesn't talk about it much. He draws a lot of lines around his life. So if there's one time where I won in it's, it's

[00:37:51] Amit: this one. To me, this is part of the enigma of Tom Wolfe and this is where, you know, we can get into to.

Just stop the love fest a little bit is like, there's, there's not much letting in of himself yet his entire career and job is exposing the inner thoughts of other people in the rest of the population and subcultures and trends.

[00:38:10] Michael: Yeah. It's voyeuristic, it's intrusive. Part of the reason to use n novelistic and, you know, techniques of lit, of, of literary techniques in reporting is to do exactly that.

To get inside.

[00:38:22] Amit: Correct. And the most can. He does that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And the most you can do is gleam his own, his own viewpoint from the way that he writes subjectively about other ones. But there is, there is very little letting in of himself. Yeah. And like, I mean, I, I dug. Deep, deep, deep. And I, I found some things and I found some nuggets that, that will continue to come up throughout this episode.

But it's, uh, this, this was a harder excavation than a lot of the other people we've

[00:38:48] Michael: done. Amen to that. I read, uh, produced through like four or five different books and watched a lot of tape and had like, harder than most to, to get inside and to try and like really imagine it. So my malkovich is really one born out of personal curiosity.

I wanna know what he's thinking when

[00:39:05] Amit: he is tripping. All right. My malkovich. So, uh, just a couple years after, I believe it was 1969, so we've referred a few times in this episode to Radical Sheik. Yes. Which, um, is a phrase. It was also, uh, an essay and then later a collect a book, which was a collection of essays.

The phrase basically refers to this idea of left wing liberal people taking up social causes. But in Tom Wolfe's view, it's, he finds it somewhat hypocritical because they are. These sort of Park Avenue rich people trying to relate to something far beyond

[00:39:42] Michael: themselves. Yeah. It's almost virtue signaling, right?

I mean, that's what I read into Radical Chic as a, as an idea. It's not virtue signaling exactly, but, but it's sort of like association with, you know, a radical point of view. From the position of extreme privilege. Yeah, yeah,

[00:39:57] Amit: yeah, exactly. From privilege, elitism, from money. Let's leave it that simple. Yeah.

Like it's, it's siding with the underrepresented from a position of money. The main essay of Radical Sheik was about a party that Leonard. Bernstein, who was the director of the New York Phil Harmonic through, uh, as a fundraiser for the Black Panthers. So the Malkovich moment I have is how Tom Wolfe got to cover that story.

So he is dating a girl named Sheila later to be his wife. Um, but this is 1969. Uh, very early on in their relationship. She's working at Harper's Magazine as a graphic designer. He goes to the Harper's office to just pay a visit, and he is walking around and I, I guess she's not there. And he comes upon, uh, the office of this guy named David Halberstam.

He's a famous journalist. Yeah, yeah. Well, surprise winning journalist. Yeah. And he was like, okay, I'm just gonna go walk into David's office and, you know, introduce myself. Have a chat. David's not there. So he just walks in anyway, you know. And on David's desk is an invitation to this Leonard Bernstein fundraiser for the Black Panthers.

And so he looks at it and he's kind of like, huh, that's really weird, that like Leonard Bernstein, this, you know, famed white tux composer is throwing a fundraiser for the Black Panthers. And so he picks up the invitation, which was not his own calls, the number to R S V P on it and says, Hey, this is Tom Wolfe.

Thank you for the invitation. I'll be there. Um, and gets his name on the list, gets his name on the list, attends a party, writes this transformative essay, which later becomes a phrase and further catapult his career. So the Malkovich moment is, is the sheer audacity and courage to pick up that invitation in an office that you're not even supposed to be in, and then dial the phone and invite yourself to the party.

So what I like is just the, the. Courage and the audacity to take it into his own hands. And this isn't a gross, you know, violation of anything. He's just saying, I see something, as you say, powers of observation. I see this weird contradiction on a paper in front of me and immediately not much thinking behind.

I'm taking this into my own hands and I'm going, would

[00:42:14] Michael: you ever do that? I mean, I just, I have a hard time imagining seeing an invitation where maybe they don't know it's who I am. I'm just gonna say, yes, I'm coming. I don't think

[00:42:24] Amit: I do. And that's why I wanna, I wanna be behind it. I wanna see where like that, that hunger, that confidence, that self-esteem, what that's all like behind it.

Uh, and the second thing I like about it from Alvi point, I just like the benign mischief of it. It's so like, there's so much vitality, you know, to that

[00:42:44] Michael: I'm gonna go to the Leonard Burnstein Black

[00:42:46] Amit: Panthers Point. Yeah. I mean, it's harmless. I'm not, I'm not robbing a bank. I'm not hard hurting anyone, but I'm gonna go crash this black tie event that I'm not really invited to, and then I'm gonna use it for journalistic reasons.

Uh, so that is my malkovich. Inviting yourself to the party. It's from someone else's office and their phone in which you shouldn't have even been in

[00:43:05] Michael: in the first place. I mean, it's a real metaphor too, of course. Like I belong at this party. I'm gonna invite myself. I'm gonna crash this party cuz I should be

[00:43:13] Amit: there.

Right? I'm increasingly loving it. The more that you like, repeat it in a first person. There's gotta be a gala this weekend that I

[00:43:21] Michael: can just crash. Right? I'm sure we can find some. Okay, let's pause for a word from our sponsor.

[00:43:32] Amit: Michael, are you pro Aquarium?

[00:43:34] Michael: No. No sir. I am antiquarian. What does it mean to be antiquarian? That means relating to or dealing in antiques or rare books, which is why I am antiquarian. Oh,

[00:43:45] Amit: cuz you like collecting rare books. Absolutely. And where do you find them? You just go to flea markets and scavenge

[00:43:51] Michael: the internet?

Absolutely not. I go to Half Price books. They have all kinds of, both new and used books. It's not like you're only getting the old stuff at Half Price books. They also have new, fresh books, you know? Right, right off, right off, right out of the oven. Including

[00:44:06] Amit: bestsellers.

[00:44:06] Michael: Including bestsellers. Right off the press.

[00:44:08] Amit: Right Off The Presser. Half Price Books is the Nation's largest new and used book seller with 120 stores in 19 states.

[00:44:16] Michael: Half Price Books is also online@hpb.com.

Okay. Category four, love and marriage. How many marriages, also, how many kids? And is there anything public about these relationships? One marriage to, Sheila mentioned Dar earlier. They were married in 1978. Tom is 47 at that point. Yes. She is a graphic designer at Harper's. They're married about 40 years.

Two kids, one boy, one girl who are now adults. That's all I want to say because everybody is very private here. Sheila goes out of her way to avoid the limelight, I think. Seems like the children do as well. I saw somewhere that, uh, I think the daughter is a, is a novelist now, or is a journalist as well.

Anyway, this is one of those where it's like people really don't want. Information out there, so I'm not gonna dig any deeper. The main thing I want to talk about is, holy cow, starting a family at age 47. That's

[00:45:24] Amit: how, I don't think he even started the family at 47. I think he got married at 47, got married at 47.

He was, I think he was a fifties dad. I think he was a dad in his fifties. Yeah, because that's very Clooney. I

[00:45:33] Michael: don't think this has come up before in our show. Not in anybody who was a, like first time dad in their fifties. So, I don't know. What do you wanna talk about here? I, I

[00:45:40] Amit: think this is a very important live question, is that a lot of people, the argument you hear a lot is like, I want to have kids, you know, by the time I'm 35, you know, because I wanna be able to like go to their soccer practice and play around with them and stuff.

But I, I mean, I just question validity of that. Point that you don't have enough energy to raise children into your fifties and sixties. And David Letterman talks about this a lot. Like he was like, ah, I just, like, my biggest regret is I didn't have children earlier. I waited till I was like 65 and now I'm an old creaky man.

And, uh, may, maybe he was on the older end of that, but I don't think that's reason

[00:46:17] Michael: enough. Well, I don't know. Let me weigh in on that. My first kid was born, I guess when I was age 35. I'm in the kind of middle to slightly older zone for other parents who have children of similar age. And the reason I say it that way is that I do think that that's part of the thing that I didn't appreciate is your kids will bond up with other children and you don't have much say over who those kids are.

I've been really lucky in that my children, for the most part have, uh, chosen friends whose parents I really like. Um, but, but I do think that, like, that, that becomes an important part of your social life in a way that I think. That's part of, I think, what goes into it. It's not just, can I still, you know, chase a Frisbee in a park when they're teenagers.

I'll be in my fifties or sixties by then. I think that's part of it, but it's also the social life that is attached to the commitment of parenthood that, uh, that I think is, is, I don't know, sometimes talked about, sometimes not, um, let's make it about me then

[00:47:19] Amit: Michael. I was waiting. This is what I was waiting for.

Yeah. Because I'm 45 and I don't have kids, and I don't know if I will have kids. I may right. I may not. Yeah. And so on the one hand you're saying Yes, go ahead and do it. This is a lesson from Tom Wolfe. On the other hand, it says, prepare to have a bunch of 32 year old, like. Dads as your friends?

[00:47:38] Michael: What's the question?

I don't understand. What is the question?

[00:47:41] Amit: What's the, what's the takeaway at Tom of Tom Wolfe being an old dad?

[00:47:45] Michael: If I'm going on the scant data that is available about it, we know that he becomes a dad at an older age than a lot of people, and we also, it sounds like he really enjoyed it and was in on it.

That's probably enough for me if part of what we're doing on this show is looking at the desirability of a life and trying to come up with examples of people who have made decisions that we do and do not find desirable. I like that we have this example here the same way I liked in Gary Shandling that he never, uh, married, uh, the same way that I like, frankly.

And Maya Angelou that she chose to be sort of solid into her older age as a woman.

[00:48:27] Amit: Yeah. Roger Ebert, Alex Trebek, Betty White, even all stepparents

[00:48:32] Michael: only. I think we need these examples and to need and, and to need to be able to say, that's cool. That looks good. From what you can tell and what you've told us about it and what we know about it, it looks good.

It's hard to say much more than that because the sense of privacy for the family is so strong. That said, I'm glad that we now have this example to add to the mix of other famous figures that we've talked about on the show.

[00:48:55] Amit: I think that's right and I think you actually, I think, I think you, you worked it out properly and that there are examples everywhere you can see yourself in any situation and still find a life you want or when you don't, let me

[00:49:07] Michael: add to that.

I think it's important for you and I to be able to say, well, this person did it and it looked okay. I think it's also for so many people, such a big looming question, especially earlier in life. Are you gonna get married? Are you gonna have kids? There's all this cultural pressure and sociological pressure to do exactly that, that these examples, time bias are time.

So exactly on, on, on the clock. Fucking A. So I think it's important to have these examples. I'm glad we can add this to the mix. Frankly, not a whole hell of a lot more to be said, I don't think. Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. All right. Category five nut worth 20 million. Did you see that too? Yes. Higher than I expected.

It was

[00:49:46] Amit: about what I expected. Honestly. I did, I did a little

[00:49:49] Michael: digging. Better read on this. Why am I still the fuck off? Okay. What did you

[00:49:52] Amit: find? There wasn't a ton of money in any of the early works prior to Bonfire of the Vanities. Right. Even Bonfire of the Vanities itself was not expected to be such the hit.

It was, yeah. So that the movie that it became that terrible movie, uh, there, there was a Tom Hanks terrible movie, um,

[00:50:12] Michael: Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith.

[00:50:13] Amit: Famous flop. Yes, yes. Famous flop. Famous disappointment. Uh, he was paid only 750 k for the movie rights. The book though, did so well that by the time he did his next novel, which was a man in full, it was so highly anticipated that his advance alone for that was seven and a half million dollars.

Oh, wow. Okay. And he was paid $3 million to four movie options, which has still not even been exercised. So there we've got 10 million explained right now. And this is in 1990s, money, right? Yeah. In 2010, a museum paid two and a half million dollars just for Tom Wolfe's documents. So these were not his manuscripts of his works.

And all these are literally his boarding passes and his sketches and notebooks, yeah. And so forth. Yeah. So there is, after Bonfire, the Vans was written, he was a highly, highly compensated individual. Yeah. Uh, and so 20 million seems dead right to me. His profile as an author and the options that went with that is money source alone.

[00:51:17] Michael: The Wright stuff, of course, was also made into a movie, which I think is his best adapted work. There's totally another one people point to, but Wright stuff is a great little movie. The

[00:51:24] Amit: right, yeah, the right stuff was nominated for best picture.

[00:51:27] Michael: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I like the number and it, it's pretty, pretty nice.

You know, it's a nice

[00:51:33] Amit: number. The other thing we're starting to explore, which I've heard from listeners, is, uh, they, they like when we talk about what we can learn about this person's relationship to money. Yeah. Um, and uh, I did, I was able, I did do some digging. I did find what Tom Wolfe had to say about it, and he was asked, uh, this money, for example, this seven and a half million that he was given for man in full, if, uh, this is too much money for a rider.

And he says, yes it is, but I'm not going to give it away. Uh, he goes, it is what kept Dickens going full tilt. So in other words, what he's saying is like, this is not an easy job. This is a slog, and this should be rewarded like other popular arts. And he doesn't feel,

[00:52:17] Michael: and he's also complicated about the compensation, in other

[00:52:19] Amit: words.

Yeah. Yeah. He's also a pretty conservative guy who doesn't like, isn't very well into charities, hence go back the clock 50 years to when he wants to exploit these people raising money for the Black Panthers. Um, so yeah, he, he was proud of his money and he thought it's a lot for what he did, but he felt like

[00:52:40] Michael: he deserved it.

All right. 20 million. Good number, category six Simpson Cite Live are Halls of fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons, as well as impersonations. There's some surprising stuff here. I found five different mentions of Tom Wolfe on snl, four of which were on weekend update.

The other thing though, SNL was that surprised me. He was actually pard by Joe Piscopo in. The fifth season in 1980. I couldn't find the actual clip on YouTube, but apparently it exists. So he was that level of famous. Yeah, which is sort hard to believe, right? On snl. There's also in The Simpsons, uh, season 18, episode six, Tom Wolfe, he uses more exclamation points than any other major American writer.

That's true Ram, ah, magnificent Mo. He stands stoop shouldered blinking in the light hollow chested like a dough faced fall. Guy who's made a career of taking dives, but has decided to get his manhood out of Hawk and take a shot at the title, or at least go for the jaw and Swack hyperextend the Champs Terry guards before kissing the mat.

Goodnight. So I think that's a little surprising that he shows up on both the Simpsons and snl. There is, however, no Hollywood Star, that's not too surprising. He's not really a Hollywood figure, no appearance on Arsenio Hall. He did however, uh, win the Booker Prize for the right stuff and he also does have a national humanities medal, which he got in 2002.

So, kind of more famous than you would think. I think that there's a lot of people under 40 who have never heard of him and maybe never will. But then again, I wonder cuz I do think some of these books. Will be assigned and they'll be good. Like you'll be glad that they were assigned in an English class, the electric Kool-Aid acid test and the right stuff.

Bonfire the vanities. I think all of them are like worthy of a syllabus in college. Yeah, I think

[00:54:47] Amit: he's, as he's as famous of that, a writer of his type can be and perhaps disproportionately famous. Yeah. And I think some of the things like the white suit and these, like the fact that he was so definitively associated with like predicting and defining cultures made him a very interesting person to, to parody.

Right. I also think like you have the people in the writer's rooms of the Simpsons and the snl and they're exactly the type to be like Tom Wolfe fans.

[00:55:15] Michael: Totally. Yeah. I mean this is like kind of, you know, east coast, uh, you know, Ivy League,

[00:55:21] Amit: um Right, right. Yeah. And I think that that plays well into like this disproportionate level of fame that you, than you would expect.

Yeah. But he was also, I dunno if you found the Letterman super clip, he was on Letterman at least three times. The

[00:55:32] Michael: new vice in America in the 1970s was pornography, so-called X-rated adult, uh, films. And, and including places with screens, that'd be seven, eight. Nine stories, high outdoor drive-ins, the better to beam all of these, uh, glistening nodes and moisten fos and stiffened gits to a panting American film countryside.

Uh, but that was the seventies. There was a a per proliferation of that thing. The magazines that were so hot in the age of pornography, the one hand magazines like, uh, penthouse or, or Playboy. Um, um, Tom, you're, you're using phrases that I don't fully understand. Maybe if you could simplify it for the layman.

Well, these, these are, these are, these are technical journalistic terms, but,

[00:56:15] Amit: uh, uh, you know, I think he was also just a man of the time at the right time. I'm just not sure we have those same modern day equivalents that would be on Letterman or Pardi on The Simpsons and all who are writers.

[00:56:30] Michael: One thing we haven't talked about yet is also, and I, I, I guess this goes in the fame category, this whole new journalism movement.

I mean, who he's associated with and the characters he. You know, brings into that new journalism phenomenon include people like Truman Capote, um, Joan Didion, hunter s Thompson. I found this great quote from Hunter s Thompson cuz yeah, cuz Tom Wolfe, it points to Hunter s Thompson as part of the new journalist movement.

Hunter s Thompson, for people who don't know, was uh, pioneer of Gonzo journalism. Rolling Stone journalist who did a lot of drugs, wrote Fear in Loathing in Las Vegas. He wrote to Tom Wolfe once and said, quote, EU thieving pile of albino warts. I'll have your goddamn femur ground into bone splinters. If you ever mention my name again and connection with that horrible new journalism shuck you're promoting.

But they were still buddies. They were buddies. Tom Tom Wolfe has a couple of Hunter s Thompson stories, like every time we met it was a story. So I invited him to dinner. So the waitress turns to Hunter and he says, I want four banana DERs and four banana splits. And that's what they bring him. He downs the four banana DERs.

He eats the four banana splits, and then he calls over the waitress and he goes like this, do it again. Well, the long and the short of it was, uh, they threw us all out. Uh, my wife, me, and uh, and we were accomplices. I guess I got another one. He comes into the restaurant, he's got this bag, hunter. What's in the bag?

Hunter says, I've got something in here that will clear out this restaurant. What's in the bag that turns out is a marine distress signal. Hunter says this thing can travel 20 miles across water. He blows it and the restaurant clears out. Now to Hunter, that was an event. Anyway, I love the Hunter s Thompson, Tom Wolfe friendship.

Um, yeah.

[00:58:29] Amit: Do you remember who else? Hunter s Thompson was friends with that we did an episode on Jerry.

[00:58:34] Michael: Jeff Walker. Oh, of course. Yes. That makes all the sense in the world. So overall, more famous than you would think. I wonder how you know where we're gonna be in 20 years, you know, with how Tom Wolfe is remembered.

I do think that a lot of the writers I mentioned earlier, Gladwell, Michael Lewis, Klosterman and others, those people still play an important role in, in life in terms of culture making. And I think that there will be scholars who are interested in this kind of legacy. Whether or not he remains a familiar name, I think is questionable.

I

[00:59:07] Amit: don't think so. I think that's the nature of just where the author is in this point in history. You know, even Joan Didion, which was a gigantic name, yeah. Uh, not too long ago, is barely

[00:59:17] Michael: remembered. The one case I would make though, is I do think that some of the psychedelic renaissance that we're in right now does have people interested in the electrical AAC test in kind of a new way as we understand the role of psychedelics in mental health and in modern society, I think what happened in the sixties will remain an important story, and that book informs that story and captures it.

In the way it got out of the lab. So I dunno. Yeah. Valid point.

[00:59:43] Amit: But it's funny if that's, if that's the reason for his

[00:59:46] Michael: shelf life. Yeah. Well and that's why they missed it in the Obi and we docked him points for it. Yeah. Good. Okay. Validation. Alright. Category seven over under, in this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year somebody was born to see if they beat the house odds and as a measure of grace.

So life expectancy for a man born in the US in 1930 was 58 years. He died age 88. So he beat it by 30 years, I think. Extremely graceful. Yes. Um, I think that maybe like next level grace, I mean we're, we're talking Maya Angelou Grace

[01:00:20] Amit: here. Yeah. Good looking, articulate until the end. He was still publishing up until two when he 16, I think doing interviews all the

[01:00:29] Michael: way through there.

Yeah. I saw an interview with him in Pree Barara, which was really interesting.

[01:00:33] Amit: Yeah, I listened to that one. Yeah, it's good. It was like the 30 year anniversary of Bonfire of the Vanities until Right, right, right. He did have a pretty major heart attack at the age of 73 that required a quadrupled bypass.

Oh, wow. And he did sort of renew a sense of gratitude in him. I saw the interview, which I believe was on 60 Minutes, that he said that like after surviving, that he appreciated things and specifically connection infinitely more after that. That grace that could have fed into it was this near death experience that he had almost 15 years before he died.

[01:01:05] Michael: Okay. Let's pause for another break.

[01:01:08] Amit: Danielle Steele. Oh,

[01:01:11] Michael: alive. The rules are simple. Dead are alive. Danielle Steele is still with us at 74 years old. Dick Cavt. I think Dick Cavt is dead, uh, incorrect. Dick Cavt is still with us at 85 years old. Oh,

test your knowledge. Dead or alive? app.com.

Okay, category eight. This is where we get into the more introspective questions. The first of these categories, man in the mirror, what did they think about their own reflection? I guess we have been saving the white suit discussion until now. I had started wearing them by accident, had just arrived in New York.

I'd always wanted to come here to work on a newspaper. I finally got a job and so anyway, I bought this, I bought a white suit, uh, for the summer. All of a sudden, in 1965, I had a book coming out. It was a collection of articles. The candy colored, a tangerine flake, streamlined baby. And I was still working as a daily reporter on the New York Hero Tribune, and people were coming to interview me and I didn't, I couldn't handle it.

I didn't. I was just tongue-tied. Uh, wait a minute. I'm supposed to be interviewing you. And to my amazement, I'd read the article. And then essentially it said, what a colorful man, he wears white suits. Uh, I realized I had a substitute for a personality, uh, and, and, and still do. I mean, uh, these white suits have been worth their weighting gold.

One of the things I find interesting is that he's a journalist but doesn't try to blend in, and he actually goes the other ways, like the, the effort to try and blend in. He learned this, working with the pranks, Mary Pranksters would've been hilarious. He would've come off as fake and inauthentic. And so he, it's, he said, it's better appeared like I'm coming from Mars or something.

Like, like just a weirdo. Somehow he was ignored for being, you know, kind of flamboyant in terms of his appearance. Yeah. Which I think is kind of, uh, it, I don't know. It's a clever technique. His commitment to the bit is extraordinary. Yes. That he owned something like 30. Um, you know, three piece white suits that it, it really does sound like that's what he wore, whether he was being photographed or not.

[01:03:40] Amit: The, the origin of it was, you know, he's a southern guy. He's from Richmond, and when he had started his professional career, he just said that that's what in, in Richmond, that's what people wore in the summer. And the first white suit that he got happened to be very thick and thick enough to keep him warm in the winter.

And he is like, this is great. I'm just gonna keep it. Yeah. I'm just gonna keep going.

[01:03:59] Michael: And, and got remarked upon it. And he decided that Yeah. To, to rock it. I, okay, so to the man in the mirror question, you know, I. I actually wrote, I think he falls into the category where I don't think he thinks about it too much.

Th this came up in the Yogi Bear episode, episode very early on. I, I, I do think he's somebody, I don't think he spends a lot of time studying the mirror. I think the white suit does give him some distance. It's an outfit that's almost so striking that I get to be me underneath this external outfit. So I do feel like it's a, it's a sort of separation from man in the mirror identity.

I, I guess based on that, I'm a kind of lean, no, he doesn't like his reflection. I also think he's quite dapper. But that's, that's all I've got on this. What, what's your thinking here? He is

[01:04:50] Amit: definitely dapper. He is Roger Moore, styled dapper. Um, yeah, so I, I've got a couple of. Views on this. So the white suit he has said eventually just became a stand-in for persona that he wasn't required to have a public persona anymore because his Taylor did it for him because he just became known as the writer in the white suit.

And so I. Think it also extended kind of into the rest of his appearance is that, you know, what people are gonna notice is what I'm wearing. Not so much, you know, the rest of my features and the rest of really like my body that contains my soul in front of the mirror. And so the same way that he used it as a stand, stand-in for persona, I think he also used it as a bit of a stand-in for self-esteem and having to, to sort of appraise himself in the mirror.

But I think he liked that stand-in, you know, he was, he was a good looking man. He was a, a good looking man, like well into his, into late age. Um, he was very fit. He was a former athlete, you know, he played college baseball.

[01:05:56] Michael: I mean, he's professorial in a lot of ways. The fact that he has a Yale PhD is not surprising to me.

And I, I think that sometimes when he is talking, I almost see this sounds judgmental, but I don't know another word. There is almost a sniffling quality to him. Formal dress lives on. Usually on the backs of, uh, doormen and elevator men and the, and the tenants looked like, uh, refugees from a bad film.

Personally, it dis believes me, uh, a great deal. I think there's a, a, a real purpose to, uh, Formality. There's real purpose to telling people how you expect to be, uh, treated.

[01:06:33] Amit: I think he does like himself a lot. Yeah. Um, I just think he's

[01:06:37] Michael: confident. He's, he's confident. There's no

[01:06:39] Amit: question. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But I think he hides behind the white suit in order to avoid like very deep self-appraisal.

[01:06:47] Michael: Yes, I agree with that. So does he like his reflection

[01:06:50] Amit: or not? Ammond I'm saying yes, but I'm saying it's also extremely ironic because here's a guy that dissects humanity and characters and culture, but I don't think he's doing a ton of it himself. This

[01:07:01] Michael: is why I wanna know what he's like on acid. I really want it.

I want that. Malcolm. Makes sense. All right. Category nine, outgoing message. Like, man the mirror. How do we think they felt about the sound of their own voice when they heard it on an answering machine or outgoing voicemail? And would they have used the default setting or recorded their outgoing message themselves?

I wrote, I don't think he likes his voice for the simple reason that he, he's, he's not a great talker. He's, he is a little slow. And I think part of it is he's such an unbelievably confident writer. Yeah. And sometimes those skills go together and sometimes they don't. This has come up when we've talked about singers, right?

Sometimes singers are. Really confident about their singing voice, but that may or it, it's totally uncorrelated, it's totally unpredictable whether or not that same confidence applies to their speaking voice. I think the same is true with writers sometimes. I've met writers who are great talkers. I've met writers who are like one thing on the page and a totally different thing in conversation, and I see that division here.

So I, I don't think he likes his voice particularly. Uh, I don't imagine he would want to leave his voice on his outgoing

[01:08:08] Amit: voicemail. I don't think he would either. I think he's an anti-elitist. Elitist, yes. Like they, there was often things, um, hunters Thompson, I believe said it himself that, um, he. Used to call Tom Wolfe's house and it, the maid would always pick up, you know, and then perhaps that was the equivalent of, uh, of voicemail back then.

I, I think I disagree with you a little bit about the quality of his voice and whether he liked it. So I, I think there was a, a, um, a gradual improvement in it. I know that I read that he, like, anytime he had to give a speech or whatever, he would write out every single word at the beginning, but it gradually got better.

And even as I look at these like Letterman interviews from the eighties and nineties, it's like, I see pretty confident, pretty articulate, pretty jovial, and pretty funny too. So I think he liked it and I think he was a pretty good orator and he just got better at it

[01:09:01] Michael: when I was working on the bonfire of the vanities and I, I went up to, uh, the Bronx mm-hmm.

To get a picture of kind of the lower end of the social scale. This is just the way people look at things. Isn't that the way, you know, it's, but you have someone to help you get home, don't you?

Now the first thing I saw, there were groups of boys who were wearing, uh, necklaces and hanging from these necklaces were, uh, silvery rings. And inside these silvery rings were upside down wise. And I thought these were peace symbols. Mm-hmm. And I thought, this is great. Yes. This in this deprived neighborhood, these boys are so concerned about the future of the planet and the threat of nuclear destruction, that they're wearing these right peace symbols.

And I looked a little closer and they turned out to be, uh, Mercedes-Benz Hood on 'em.

[01:09:48] Amit: I think we do have a disagreement on, uh, on whether he liked his voice, whether he liked it, and the confidence. I think we do agree on the, uh, admitted arrogance.

[01:09:58] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Category 10 regrets, public or private. What we really wanna know is what, if anything, kept this person awake at night?

[01:10:06] Amit: I got a few things. There was this feud that he had with John Irving, John Updyke, and Norman Mailer that basically like, it sounds like BA pretty much took it to the grave. I'm not sure he regretted it, but I wanted, yeah,

[01:10:20] Michael: that's what I was gonna say. I don't see the regret in that, but that's it. I mean, the thing is like, and we haven't really talked about this enough with him, he's a rabble rouser man.

And, and I do think that he, like any good journalist, is willing to sort of get into a fight and pick a fight. And one of the things he learned, he, he talks about this early in his career, is that. I don't know if you followed this story, this whole thing he wrote that was really critical of the New Yorker and sparked all these fights with New Yorker writers At the time, he was critical of like a lead editor, but what he discovered is like, oh, that nothing really came of that.

These fights don't matter all that much and he's willing to sort of like throw rocks and piss people off, and he's more or less at peace with that. I mean, that's actually when it came to this category, regrets. I didn't find anything quite the opposite. I almost look at his life and been like, shouldn't you have had some regrets somewhere?

[01:11:12] Amit: That was exactly what I take is like, this guy needs more regrets, like the hypocrisy

[01:11:16] Michael: that's prevalent, kinda an asshole in some places, right? I mean, I like him. I love his writing style. I think you'll have to have that kind of confidence to be the kind of author he is. There was an article by Leonard Bernstein's daughter that really caught my attention.

What she was critical of was how the app piece affected her mother, like Leonard Bernstein. Okay. Kind of. Famous as far as composers go, but he was traveling a lot. Her mother, Leonard Bernstein's wife caught a lot of the flack from that radical chic article in a way that felt like kind of unfair. And, and to hear Leonard Stein's daughter tell the St story sort of like, Hey asshole, did you see what you did here?

There are consequences to these kinds of, you know, adventurous articles you're writing Tom.

[01:12:03] Amit: Yeah. Especially the attack style ones. Yeah. Which, you know, I think acid test and some of the other ones weren't. But certainly the, the radical chic and the,

[01:12:12] Michael: well, there was, there was one against like the art world.

There was, there was a, a book that was like really directed at like architects. I mean, he, he, yes. Thank you. I, I think your phrase earlier, anti-elitist. Elitist is really right on the money because he comes from high society. I do think a lot of his attacks, or if you wanna call him, that are directed at elitist institutions and I'm kind of on board with a lot of them.

Cause they do feel. A little bit like punching up or punching sideways, but occasionally I wonder if he's punching down a little bit. He doesn't appear self-reflective about that. He feels, if anything, arrogant and, you know, I don't know, we don't have a specific category dedicated to undesirable qualities, but there is a part of me that wishes he was a little bit more self-reflected about that.

I mean, one thing I also thought about for the regrets category is he does, at some point, he goes after neuroscientists and evolutionists about theory of language stuff. There, there's a couple of like throwing rocks at, um, scientists where I'm like, who the fuck are you? You don't know anything about this.

Or maybe you know something, but he, he's smart and successful enough that he does feel a kind of license to wade in on any topic whatsoever at, at a point that, I don't know, I, I don't think that there's a ton of humility. All right, let's move on. Category 11, good dreams or bad dreams. This is not about personal perception, but rather does this person have a haunted look in the eye?

Something that suggests inner turmoil, inner demons, or unresolved trauma. I got no evidence whatsoever. I looked into this a little bit. He does talk a little bit about up at late at night with Writer's block. I think that there's a kind of preoccupation with the subject that I think is running through his very intelligent mind as he is trying to work himself to sleep late at night on the bed head hits the pillow, insomnia versus Good dreams, bad dreams.

Are those the same question I, I don't know. I think pretty good because he is, I think, born with a cer certain kind of self-assuredness and gets that validation in his career in a way that I think I'm inclined to say. Yes, he sleeps well, but it's on the bubble there. You can make a case either way for me on this one.

[01:14:22] Amit: He definitely does. I think there's a rigidity about him that should be examined more, and that's what we are doing right now. But I don't think he did it. And I think that's a clear head that, uh, rests peacefully every night. He has clarity and that clarity is perhaps due to denial, but I think he's got it.

All right.

[01:14:40] Michael: Let me ask this random ass question. Do you think he ever saw a therapist? Uh, no. I kind of don't either. Right. And he's an atheist. He describes himself as a lapsed Presbyterian. He took L s D once that we know of in 1966. My point with all of this is like sometimes I think we need to be looking for evidence of self-reflection.

And I'm not saying it in most places. He does not turn this gaze inward. All that. What's,

[01:15:06] Amit: what's so bad about it?

[01:15:08] Michael: I don't care who you are, man. I believe we've all got an inner conflict that we're tr that we're wrestling with. And, and I think that sometimes the gays does need to be turned inward, otherwise you have blind spots in who you are and what kind of harm you may be causing.

This article I mentioned about Leonard Bernstein's daughter, that's one of many examples. There are people who he pissed off. There's no question about that. And I don't see anything other than, well, that's my job as his, uh, accountability for it. That is arrogant. I'm looking for a little bit of, you know, did he reckon with, we both agreed there were not enough regrets and the regret category, so I don't know.

Maybe we shouldn't hold him to kind of new age standards here. But I, I, I, I wonder, I just, I, I believe that that inner conflict exists in everybody, and I don't think it can all come out in creative works. You know, on the page and something looks bottled up to me. So I don't know. Now that I've said that bad dreams, this son of a bitch had bad dreams.

[01:16:04] Amit: I think they coexist. I, I think, I think he has good dreams because of the absence perhaps that you suggest of the looking inwards. Yeah. But if he only did it, he may have had some bad dreams. I mean, this is a soul question, Michael. This is, you know, we use the word quality of life currently, and so quality of life, you know, all of those outward signs, but the actual soul, I don't know.

I think that's what we're debating here, is that you may be able to sleep well, you may be wealthy and you may, you know, have mostly notoriety with even going back to what Jennifer said, a lot of people hated him. Not just his writing, but we know we have evidence about other people that just hated him.

But if you don't internalize that, is that a bad thing? And I think what you're saying is you don't like, for

[01:16:45] Michael: you it is, or at least acknowledge that somebody else's point of view could have some validity to it. I, I don't, I don't see him necessarily. To my satisfaction reckoning with his critics. Yeah, I think he does a little bit of it, but I feel like there's more defense mechanisms than there is sort of honest accounting.

Yep, fair enough. And I'm gonna change my answer in this next category, category 12, cocktail coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. This may be a question of what sounds like the most fun to partake with this person or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to a part of them.

We are most curious about. I initially wrote coffee for trite reasons, for for boring reasons that often when somebody's really smart, I just wanna have a cup of coffee and learn with them. I'm actually, as this conversation's gone on, become a lot more curious about his inner life, genuinely curious about his inner life, I think I need to have some cocktails with this man.

Maybe Gen Genna tonic. I could do a Genna tonic with Tom Wolfe. I, I need to see some cracks in the armor and I need to get him drunk enough so that I can, I can look into the eyes and get an answer to some of these questions, cuz there's a lot I do still, like, there's a lot I do still find desirable about his life, and maybe there is some more reckoning and personal accounting than what I'm giving him credit for.

And maybe it's just, you know, I, I don't see it because he was so private. Which is fair, but that's totally fair. But I want to know, so I've got curiosity here, so I don't want coffee anymore. Throw the coffee out, Tom, dump it down there. That's better. It's a

[01:18:19] Amit: white suit for crying out loud.

[01:18:21] Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Let's find something that won't

[01:18:24] Amit: stay out. Let's, I, I like that you twisted on that and I, and I agree with you. Like I'm, I'm very curious about the inner life of this guy now, especially as this conversation's gone on. I did say coffee. I'm gonna stick with it because you've covered the territory, but I'll, cuz I happen to explain why I want coffee.

Cuz this man was so good at summarizing. Summarizing people, summarizing trends, summarizing characteristics. I don't know what the hell I am, like, I'm just, I'm in this confused, you know, first generation, uh, American born, like treading a couple of cultures and a few careers, and I, I think he has an appraisal of me and perhaps he can sum it up in some sort of generational phrase or whatnot.

But I want, I just wanna see where he sees me in the entire unfolding of American culture and trends. Because I can't quite figure it out.

[01:19:15] Michael: Say more? Is it what I talked about earlier in terms of the powers of observation? Like we haven't talked about his sort of sociological orientation and the influence of Mox Var.

Right. And in terms of understanding society. I mean, I think ultimately in so many ways he is

[01:19:30] Amit: actually a sociologist. Yeah. So it's observation, but it's observation in a cultural context that he does. Right. You know, right. Observation. You can assign that to a, a therapist or a, a psychiatrist that says, you know, assesses what's going on, behaviors and thoughts and whatnot.

But what Tom Wolfe does is does it very well in a larger context of society. Yeah. So it's not just you and your values and your preferences and your behavior that shapes you, but it's also the forces that are happening in the society around you. Yeah. I, I think that's a superpower perhaps, that he has in an individual appraisal of somebody, which we've never seen before, other than him bashing Leonard Bernstein's wife.

Yeah. You know, I'd like to get a slightly more objective, hopefully less cynical. Appraisal. I

[01:20:15] Michael: devoutly believe that each of us life is determined by two things, not just your own psychological makeup, but by the fact that if you're going to intersect with society, I think of the individual as vertical.

And the society has this, um, broad plane, and you're going to change when you intersect with society whether you want to or not. There is no way to understand individuals, particularly today. Without understanding the society around them. You know, much like a great comedian. I mean, one thing, I don't always love Seinfeld, but one thing I think Seinfeld does very, very well, so does Larry David, for that matter, is identify situations at which social norms fall apart and like what are the rules in those situations that, that, that's such a, like pay attention to small things and you can extract out so much more.

Tom Wolfe does that. That's what powers of observation is really all about. The little things that nobody else is paying attention to will tell you so much of what you need to know. Yeah.

[01:21:18] Amit: Which is what I go back in my arguing with you and your point number five. Like I, I think you'd be a great third host for this show.

I, yeah. Because he does so much what we attempt to do.

[01:21:27] Michael: We've tried to bring him into this conversation as much as we could considering that the man is dead. Yes. Which brings us to our final category, the Vander Beak named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said in Varsity Blues, I don't want your life.

Ah, do you want. Tom Wolfe's life. Uh,

[01:21:46] Amit: let's sack the cards here. So I, I think we both like the work, but as we've said, infinite time's over the Vander beak is not about liking the work or liking, um, them per se. Yeah. It's, is the totality of everything desirable to

[01:22:02] Michael: us. Yeah. Yeah. Individually. Okay. Let's, let's, let's break this down on a, on a few different levels.

The superficial levels are actually pretty good, $20 million. That's a nice number. Has a family when he's ready for a family and seems like an engaged father, what we can tell. Pretty good famous in a way that doesn't look too intrusive. You know, he, he sort of gets to decide when he's public and when he's private.

That power does that for him. Yeah, and the wardrobe does a lot of that for him. That is pretty good. The things that I love about him are very compelling. I want to be a, a great writer. I want to, you know, have, have power of words, power of observation. I do like the job, you know, and he lived a long and graceful life.

I think it was also really interesting. I think the, the things, projects he got to go into. You know, and, and the, the things he took an interest in and got immersed in, that looks like fun. It's like you said, kind of a travel writer experience in a way. I also think a life of the mind, you know, has some real appeal to me, even though it's arrogant at times.

I do like the intellectual aspects of his personality and of his interests, and from what I can tell, even of his friendships, there is something sort of lurking here in terms of. You know, my heaviest criticism of this life is it looks a little bit unbalanced in terms of self-reflection and, you know, personal, maybe even spiritual growth.

You know, I, I, I'm sure some of that does come from the work itself, that every time you finish an article or finish a book, there does feel like a, an evolution, an internal evolution of where you were before you started and what it feels like now that it's out in the world. Uh, uh, so, but I don't know if that is as good as, uh, as other forms of, um, self-actualization that I referenced a minute ago.

Mm-hmm. So, you know, I don't know. There's, there's, there's actually a pretty heavy case for, but some pretty strong evidence against too. I'm, I'm, I'm actually, I. Pretty 50 50 right now. Yeah.

[01:24:16] Amit: Yeah. And I am too. And this is where I'm leaning. And I, I agree with you. I, I don't see the self-actualization, you know, I don't see a reckoning with the throwing stones and, you know, the possible destruction.

But I kind of see this, you know, in a Maslow's hierarchy way, right? That like, you know, obviously if, if everybody can achieve the top of the crown of self-actualization, then great. Yes, we all want their life. Yeah. But if you can kind of live at the upper. Area of one of the lower quadrants of Maslow's hierarchy, then I think you're doing pretty good.

I think it sucks if you're at the bottom of the next hierarchy. If you're striving for self-actualization and get absolutely like nowhere on it, I think that sucks. But if you're in, you know, if you're just at the top of some other need pool and you haven't really crossed into the zone of self-actualization, I think you're happy.

I think you perhaps have not reached a spiritual epiphany, but I don't mind it. I, I don't think it compromises, uh, happiness. I don't think it compromises whatever perception I have of universal justice desire. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, I'll say, yes, I'll take it. I, I won't, like if, if this is a pure measure of spirituality, no.

Right. If this is taking everything into account, which it is, then I'll say, yes, I want your lifetime Wolfe.

[01:25:38] Michael: That makes sense. I think that's a really good answer and I, I may be there too. I think, you know, one of the things about the VanDerBeek question is always, Like, what of my own biases am I zeroing out?

You know, because I, I can never zero it all out and, and approach each of these as a completely blank slate. So there, there's internal spiritual growth or, or, or psychological growth or, or both is something that I've cared more about lately, but I do think a lot of it does come with creative expression.

And to your point about pivot, I mean, I think he followed a creative evolution in his own work that that was, uh, cumulative. You know, would I have liked to have seen other things and acts of self-reflection and humility? Yeah, I think so. But I don't know that that's a deal breaker for me and everything else really is pretty exciting and pretty compelling.

And, and, and I don't know. I mean, there's also even something to be said of. Being a kind of figure where people argue about you, you know, and argue about your claims as well as your decisions and your existence. Uh, you know, there, there is an ongoing conversation that whether he's explicitly referenced or not, I think that, you know, he did something legacy wise and, and I think he's, you know, is somebody to talk and think about.

I, I I like that. I like that too. You know, so I I'm with you. I'm I'm with you. I'll take it. Uh, uh, I think it's not a hard Yes for me. It's not an overwhelming Yes. I have some reservations with it, but I too want your life Tom

[01:27:12] Amit: Wolfe. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm in that 50 to 60% category. Yeah. But

[01:27:16] Michael: yeah, but I say yes.

Yeah, yeah. But it, but also a very different kind of figure for us in the show. Yeah. So I'm glad we hadn't, I'm glad we hashed it out. Okay. Well, I think we're there. Okay. Amit, you are author Tom Wolfe. You have. Died and, uh, have ascended to, uh, somewhere. There's something behind you, uh, and what stands between you and that something is, uh, St.

Peter, the proxy for the afterlife and you have an opportunity to make your pitch to St. Peter about your great contribution to the stream of life. The floor is yours. Ah,

[01:27:54] Amit: okay. St. Peter. There is entertainment. There was entertainment, there was also life. There were real things happening before I existed.

They, they were two circles that did not. Overlap and that was a problem. That was a problem because you can't be entertained entirely by fantasy. You need to be entertained by what's actually happening and existing in the characters in the real live breathing world around us. What I did and why, what I introduced and then later carried forward in my career, even as I stopped writing non-fiction, was to make real things that have actually happened, entertained.

And while some may make an argument that I, perhaps I did that at a distance without the true self-reflection or self-actualization. I damn well helped other people get there by introducing them to reality in a very, very fun way, and they can take from it what they want. Either entertainment, self-reflection, or just a way to pass the time.

Let me in.

[01:28:57] Michael: Famous and gravy listeners, before you leave, I have a request. If you are interested in participating in our opening quiz where we reveal the dead celebrity, then send us an email. You can reach us at hello famous en gravy.com. It's usually pretty fun and it only takes a few minutes. Thank you so much to Jennifer Armstrong for joining us on this episode.

If you're interested to learn more about her work or if you want to purchase her books, which I highly recommend, you can find out more@jenniferkarmstrong.com. Jennifer, j e n n i f e r. Please tell your friends about us. You can find us on Twitter. Our handle is famous and gravy. We also have a newsletter which you can sign up for on our website, famous and gravy.com.

Famous and Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thank you for listening. Tell your friends, see you next time.