Meeting Tom Wolfe

On Thursday evening, October 20, I saw the legendary Tom Wolfe speak at the Book Culture store on 81st and Columbus Avenue here in Manhattan. He was there to talk about his book, The Kingdom of Speech. A truly magical evening. He was resplendent in his trademark white suit and entered the bookstore  carrying a hand-carved cane with a painted wolf's head at the top.  At 85, Wolfe is a bit frail walking, but once he was seated and talking he showed the ebullience of someone half his age.

I had the privilege to to chat with him for about four or five minutes and he was friendly, funny and kind -- a real gentleman. He signed my copy of The Bonfire of the Vanities and shared some anecdotes about the writing of the book. (He said he knew the book would be a success when his typist got upset when he didn't bring any pages for her one day; she made it clear that her annoyance wasn't due to the loss of income but her impatience to find out what happened in the story next.)

I asked him if Noam Chomsky's linguistic theories and radical politics, which he discusses in his new book, are connected in some way. Wolfe didn't think so. He said that Chomsky absorbed his anarchist views politics from his Jewish grandparents, who had lived in Russia under the Tsar, who and was not very kind to the Jews, to put it mildly. Wolfe sees Chomsky's politics and linguistics concepts as entirely separate mental constructs, though he does believe both of them are entirely wrong.

It's interesting that during the Q & A following Wolfe's talk, not a single person in the educated, Upper West Side audience took issue with Wolfe's critique of evolution or Chomsky's notion of a "universal grammar" built into the brain. Perhaps they were intimidated by Wolfe or felt they were simply not knowledgable enough about either evolution or linguistics to challenge his opinion. But Wolfe made it very clear that he is not a Creationist. In fact, he admits he is not a believer at all, and is "without religion." He won't call himself an atheist, though, because he considers people who label themselves such are "putting on airs."

Just for the record, he doesn't believe in The Big Bang Theory, either.

He hinted that his next book may be about social status. Which all his books have been about to some extent, but it will be fascinating if he decides to tackle the subject head-on.

In any event, getting to see and talk to Tom Wolfe was a real kick, and now I have a signed copy of what is arguably his best book. I eagerly await the next one.