TOM WOLF IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Last week I linked readers to part one of Peter Robinson's compelling interview with best selling author Tom Wolf. One can find the entire interview here. Peter Robinson is a true intellectual and asks challenging questions to which he receives challenging answers from Wolf. Obviously Wolf is well versed in a variety of subjects from Freud to politics. Forget Matt Luaer and Larry King. Robinson offers substantive stuff. Here is Robinson's synopsis of the Wolf interview:

Tom Wolfe begins by discussing the written word, in its popular forms. The master novelist and journalist says the novel is dying a horrible death, although non-fiction work will continue and the memoir will never die. He then talks about the subject of his latest novel (still in progress): immigration.

Tom Wolfe says the ideas for his novels grow out of conversation — from what’s really happening. His critics have pounced on this, calling his novels more journalism than literature. But Wolfe shrugs this off: He says he doesn’t write for the “charming aristocracy” — the aristocracy of taste that believes the novelist must aspire to things the masses cannot understand.

Darwin, Marx, Freud, (E.O.) Wilson? Tom Wolfe says the common thread there is the power of the word — of ideas that change human history in large and obvious ways.

Tom Wolfe says evolution ended when man learned to speak — with the dawn of homo loquax. Where status for the beast of the field is determined by power, for man it is determined in innumerable ways because of language. And it is language that gives us rational thought. Wolfe asks, “Have you ever see an animal shrug?”

Tom Wolfe and America? He loves the place, a position that puts him at odds with much of the charming aristocracy. He’s also an optimist about America — and American greatness. “The biggest problem,” says Wolfe, “is all the people who see a problem.”