Chapter Nine the Novelist

Chapter Nine The Novelist Having often pronounced the novel dead in his role as a historian-essay- ist on the subject of the New Journalism, Tom Wolfe set about in the early 1980s to exhume it. He had no intention of joining the ranks of those American writers who had turned the novel into a mere exercise in style to impress other writers. Wolfe the novelist used the same inspira- tion as Wolfe the journalist. In large part, his conception of the novel was drawn from the works of Charles Dickens, whom he often cited as a model in his pronouncements on the New Journalism. He also included Honoré de Balzac, Emile Zola, and William Makepeace Thackeray. These novelists had employed a style of reporting not far removed from that of modern journalism, and it infused their novels with a vigor and bite that resonated through the centuries. Their novels had a richness that Wolfe found tragically lacking in late-twentieth-century fiction. That dearth left the field of fiction open to relatively new players such as himself. Wolfe had always recognized the importance of fiction as historical chronicle. He said that he assumed his book about Ken Kesey, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, would have a short shelf life, that it would last only until the literary figures of that era produced the great novels of psychedelia. He felt the same about Radical Chic, which he also thought would be disposable after a brief time. The endurance of both books surprised their creator. He was further surprised by the literary community's apparent lack of interest in producing fiction to encapsulate the era, the way Dickens and Zola did in their work. Engaging in such an effort in the last part of the twentieth century, Wolfe came to realize, would go against the grain of intellectual fashion. Writing a "big novel," a novel that dealt realistically with the issues and styles of a particular time, would earn a writer no recognition. Literary fashion dictated that writers undertake more self-conscious pursuits: the absurdist novel, metafiction, or whatever. "You had to move in an arcane direction to gain recognition," Wolfe said.1 Wolfe began talking about writing the great novel of New York as far back as the late 1960s. Other, perhaps less forbidding assignments inter- 112 The Novelist 113 vened: Radical Chic came along in 1970, then the astronaut stories for Rolling Stone and the ensuing years lost to research on the space program. Throughout this period, however, he spoke of writing a big novel and was quite frank with interviewers, often talking about what he had in mind. Having eviscerated the modern novel in countless speeches and in the introduction to The New Journalism, Wolfe was at first hesitant about declaring himself a would-be novelist. In 1974 he told the interviewer Joe David Bellamy: I think the only future for the novel is reporting, which means there's not going to be much difference between the best novels and the best nonfiction. ... I'm having this battle with myself right now on this Vanity Fair book. ... I want to do a book that performs something of the same func- tion of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and I'm weighing whether this should be fiction or nonfiction, because everything is going to be based on a jour- nalistic reality. Now, the question is to me a completely technical one. Once I reach that decision, the rest is purely technical.2 There were other reasons to write a novel, among them, the self- imposed threat that it was time to put up or shut up. He had bashed fiction writers so relentlessly that he felt he had to walk in their literary shoes to retain credibility. He was also curious about his talent: could he indeed write a novel? It looked easy, but was it really? Although he realized he might fail as a novelist, he did not want to regret never having tried. "I didn't want to reach the end of my career and look back and say, after all this theorizing about fiction and nonfiction, 'What would have happened if I had tried a novel myself? What if this theorizing was an elaborate screen I've constructed so I don't have to face the challenge?'"3 Wolfe admitted that he suspected he had made such an issue about the poor quality of modern fiction because he thought subconsciously that he could not write a novel. He had to prove something—to himself as well as the literary community.4 In short, did he have the right stuff to be a novelist? New York's "High" and "Low" The Right Stuffand the sale of the film rights to movie producers gave Wolfe enough financial security to take the time he would need to write the book. After finishing From Bauhaus to Our House in 1981, Wolfe had cleared the decks of book commitments and also ended his run as a 114 TOM WOLFE monthly contributor to Harper's. Blank pages awaited his novel. By his own description, Wolfe worked diligently for months and got nothing done. "It was frightening in this stage of my career to be doing a novel," he said. "I was really under a lot of pressure. I knew I could expect no mercy, after all the things I've said about contemporary fiction."5 Many writers might approach work on a novel by first creating characters, choosing a theme, or constructing a strong plot. Wolfe began only with the notion that he wanted to write a novel of New York. He began, therefore, with the setting. Then he awaited characters to step onstage from his subconscious. They did not arrive. He was greatly influenced by Vanity Fair, but he realized that if he just followed the model of Thackeray's novel, he would omit the "underclass" of New York. Once he made the determination that his novel would include both the "high" and "low" of New York, he thought that settling into a comfortable routine as a reporter would lead him in the direction he needed to go if he hoped to ever complete his novel. After months of work with little to show for his efforts, Wolfe returned to reporting to jump-start his ambitious book. Dressed in con- ventional suits (he eschewed his customary white clothing), he showed up at the Manhattan Criminal Court Building and watched the parade of members of New York's "low" society appear before the judges. The judicial system was an equalizer, Wolfe felt, the one place where the high and the low intersected. One of Wolfe's acquaintances was a judge named Burton Roberts, who allowed the writer to observe several of his cases and even sit next to him on the bench during one hearing. Another friend of Wolfe's, Edward Hayes, had served as an assistant district attor- ney in the Bronx. Hayes informed Wolfe that the Manhattan courts, brutal as they may have seemed to a judicial novice, were nothing com- pared to life in the Bronx. Finally, after two years of research and rough- ing out characters, Wolfe took a journey to the Bronx. The cruelties of life in that borough contrasted superbly with the lives of New York's "high." Ideas began to form and disparate notions began to come together. Wolfe had not written any substantive scenes because he had no outline for the book, and he was a firm believer in outlines. His expe- riences in the Bronx gave him the idea of how New York's high and low could intersect on his fictional stage. By this point, Wolfe had invested three years in the book but had not written any usable scenes. All he could show for his efforts were his con- siderable notes from his courtroom visits and an outline. He needed The Novelist 115 pressure to force himself to write the book. Something akin to the fero- cious deadline pressure of a newspaper would do, he reasoned. Again he considered his literary models: Dickens, Balzac, Zola. They had written some of their books on deadline, serializing them in newspapers of the day. A chapter or two would appear each week in the newspaper. The results had been fabulous, in Wolfe's view. He reasoned that he could risk his reputation with such an experiment. Weekly deadlines might be a bit much, so Wolfe approached Jann Wenner of the biweekly Rolling Stone with his idea. With a 100-page outline and chapter summaries to go on, as well as his deep affection for Wolfe, Wenner agreed to the project. He offered the writer an unprece- dented amount of space and a $200,000 contract. Then Wolfe began writing, under the gun. Having invested so much time in researching the area where he knew the scattered characters would intersect, the courts, Wolfe did not have the patience to invest a lot of time in his protagonist. For the serialized version of the novel, he made Sherman McCoy a writer. This choice turned out to be the most troubling part of what Wolfe referred to as his public first draft. He had not done any research about writers. "I thought I knew it all, and I didn't," he said. "I hadn't even thought of myself in the role of the writer."6 Early in the serialization, Wolfe realized the enormity of this mistake as a career choice: he had no interest in showing Sherman at work.

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