May 17, 2018

"Wolfe’s white suits didn’t make him look cool; they made him look odd. And what he seemed to understand was that odd was far more intriguing than cool."

"Odd is full of shadings and contradictions, frustrations and delights. The odd man fascinates. His personality must be unpacked; he is worth considering. But he also must be approached with caution and care. Who knows what he might do? Cool is overrated. People recognize cool when they see it, but once it’s witnessed and documented, it’s finished. To be cool is to be part of an era or a movement. But Wolfe surpassed his times. He stood apart..... A white suit... suggests control and order. It doesn’t hide a thousand sins; it reveals every dropped crumb.... Wolfe is said to have been a disciplined writer, one who sat daily at his desk with the goal of producing 10 pages, no matter how long it took. Writing might be an art, but producing a steady output of legendary work is a science. He was the white-coated new journalist: experimenting and researching. He was a clean slate heading into subcultures and reporting back...."

From "The genius of Tom Wolfe’s white suits" by Robin Givhan (WaPo).

The meaning of whiteness. I realize my "whiteness" tag is something I use for everything about white, including the racial, "whiteness studies" things. Givhan does not overtly say anything about race... and yet... White isn't "cool," white is about order and discipline, white can only sojourn into the "subcultures" and report back...

39 comments:

Lewis Wetzel said...

At least he did not wear a pith helmet.

J. Farmer said...

The unbearable whiteness of Tom Wolfe. Bonfire of the Vanities remains the single best treatise on racial politics in modern America.

traditionalguy said...

Wolfe was a typical southern aristocrat in a style that is now gone with the wind. It was a role playing job of an educated, rich, Episcopalian owner of inherited plantation wealth. Playing that many roles seamlessly takes much energy, like being a trial lawyer until the case is over.

rhhardin said...

There was Tony Curtis in The Great Race pie scene.

David Begley said...

All the midgets attack the Giant now that he is dead and can't respond. Petty doesn't begin to describe it.

Who will long remember the writers who publically argued with Wolfe about something back in the day. Updike? I can't recall.

This Swamp creature's attack just makes the Swamp look even worse, if that's even possible.

tcrosse said...

It's all drag, right ?

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

"The odd man fascinates. ...Who knows what he might do? "

He might ask for money or try to tell you all about The Rupture.

People recognize cool when they see it, but once it’s witnessed and documented, it’s finished.

I didn't know that - maybe because it's so "deep"?

A white suit... suggests a gimmick.

buwaya said...

White was semi-formal tropical wear, for daily business in a difficult climate.

I come from generations of gentlemen who had such suits, often worn outdoors with pith helmets.

Paddy O said...

And yet 'odd' isn't quite the right word for it. In past ages, queer would be more precise, as 'odd' denotes more of a passive and subtle nonconformity. But queer doesn't work now because it was shifted and narrowed in meaning. Like Eskimos and their snow, English has a 1000 ways to say homosexual. But it had to steal words to get there.

Michael K said...

"White Privilege" is work. He knew that.

Trumpit said...

White shows the dirt. Tom Wolfe's usual (or is it unusual?) get-up made me want to throw up. The world no longer has to endure his foppery. I tried to watch the William F. Buckley interview of him from 1975. After five minutes of getting nowhere, I switched it off. There was an inconsiderate guy smoking a cigarette in the audience that turned me off. I strongly suggest anonymity for all (AFA) as a way to live one's life (LOL). Second-hand smoke may have killed both Buckley and Wolfe. The erection of Trump was Buckley's posthumous comeuppance.

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

J. Farmer said...
The unbearable whiteness of Tom Wolfe. Bonfire of the Vanities remains the single best treatise on racial politics in modern America.


True! Wiki tell me he only wrote 4 novels:
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) - good
A Man in Full (1998) - good
I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004) - bad
Back to Blood (2012) - bad

Wince said...

A Wolfe in white clothing?

tim in vermont said...

Mark Twain is a literary god and you can't wear a white suit as a writer without referring to him.

tim in vermont said...

Ok, American writer.

tcrosse said...

Wolfe's get-up made him look a lot like the Interlocutor in a Minstrel Show. That might not have been his intention.

Seeing Red said...

Did she say anything about Melania’s White suit? What about Hillary’s white suit?

Rick.T. said...

Sometimes a white suit is just a white suit:

"When he moved to New York he owned two sports jackets. Herald Tribune reporters all wore suits, and so he went out and bought a suit: a white suit. The suit wasn’t some kind of statement; it was what you wore in the summer in Richmond, Virginia. The first time he wore it, however, he realized the suit wasn’t of summer weight. It was thick enough to wear in cold weather, too. That’s how strapped for cash he is: he wears his white suit into the fall so he doesn’t have to buy another."

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/how-tom-wolfe-became-tom-wolfe

There are also plenty of photographs of him not wearing it. Don't overthink it.

Big Mike said...

If he hadn't had genuine writing talent then "odd" wouldn't have helped him in the slightest.

Michael said...

There is a wonderful store in New Orleans which has racks and racks of subtly different white linen suits, seersucker suits in four or five colors, old fashioned pin cords, rows of poplins. Perils, out on Magazine. Worth a visit if you dress as though you care about yourself.

Sebastian said...

"one who sat daily at his desk with the goal of producing 10 pages"

3650 pages a year? Much as I admire TW, that seems a bit much.

Either he didn't often didn't reach the "goal," or the production included a lot of rewriting.

J. Farmer said...

@Caldwell Titcomb IV:

True! Wiki tell me he only wrote 4 novels:
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) - good
A Man in Full (1998) - good
I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004) - bad
Back to Blood (2012) - bad


Bonfire is the only of Wolfe's novels that I read. I am more familiar with his non-fiction book, and I attempted to read The Kingdom of Speech last year but could not finish it.

Paddy O said...

Sebastian, that goal just about matches Jack London's habit (and advice) to write 1000 words a day. It's not that hard to do if that is your profession. Some days are harder than others, but it's really a pre-lunchtime activity. The more you write the easier it becomes. The ten page limit is not so much a goal to leap for, but an approachable limit that gives a sense of completeness to the task for the day. In those 10 pages (or 1000 words) everything becomes secondary. Then you finish and can go about the rest of the day with freedom.

It also, of course, assumes editing. The artistry of writing is in the editing. But to edit well, you need a lot of content to work with.

I have no doubt that well over half of the words he wrote each day never found their way into print. But they served a purpose in constructing the content.

Editing takes a different aspect of creativity, so nicely divides the day into different tasks.

Quaestor said...

There was a British sci-fi comedy call The Man in the White Suit. The goes plot is briefly thus: A brilliant and unorthodox textile chemist invents a miraculous fabric that repels dirt and never wears out, it also can never be stained, consequently, the fabric will accept no dyes, it remains forever luminously white. At first, he is greeted as a genius, but when the vested interests realize his invention might threaten their incomes the young chemist becomes the object of wrath.

Quaestor said...

What about Hillary’s white suit?

What interests me is her black suit, the one that enables her to speak Ebonics.

khematite said...

What does it say that, prior to Wolfe, the best-known white suit wearer was Sydney Greenstreet in the movies? He almost always played a villain--though usually one more rascally than truly evil.

David-2 said...

I totally respect our hostesses' right to post whatever she feels like, and I really like this blog overall and have been reading it for years, and I cheerfully acknowledge that it is completely easy for me to skip posts I happen not to be interested in ...

Yet, with all that said, I feel I'd like to mention that if there's never ever again a post tagged "Robin Givhan" it would be too soon.

Etienne said...

"Sometimes a white suit is just a white suit." - Colonel Sanders

OK, Col Sanders didn't say that...

Robert Cook said...

"It also, of course, assumes editing. The artistry of writing is in the editing. But to edit well, you need a lot of content to work with."

And plenty of time.

Robert Cook said...

"There was a British sci-fi comedy call The Man in the White Suit. The goes plot is briefly thus: A brilliant and unorthodox textile chemist invents a miraculous fabric that repels dirt and never wears out, it also can never be stained, consequently, the fabric will accept no dyes, it remains forever luminously white. At first, he is greeted as a genius, but when the vested interests realize his invention might threaten their incomes the young chemist becomes the object of wrath."

Capitalism!

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Givhan is right, but what she's saying is really just a paraphrase of what Wolfe himself said about his suit, a fairly accurate paraphrase, but definitely not an improvement.

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

J. Farmer said...I am more familiar with his non-fiction book, and I attempted to read The Kingdom of Speech last year but could not finish it.

People familiar with the subject(s) said it was pretty awful; FWIW two reviews.

pawtampa said...


In the counter culture, but not of it. Also, Southern.

tcrosse said...

The Kingdom of Speech could have used a good editing down.

Michael K said...

I attempted to read The Kingdom of Speech last year but could not finish it.

People familiar with the subject(s) said it was pretty awful;


I got the audio and have not gotten far. I downloaded "A Man in Full" and will see how that goes.

Paddy O said...

"And plenty of time."

Yes and no. The most prolific academic writers I know have little extra time but they use the time they have very well. It's the 20 minutes here and there throughout a day that add up.

So I've learned.

Lydia said...

Givhan: "He was costumed like the angel of deadly prose. His innocent wonder was murderous."

Made me think of Melville on "whiteness" in Moby-Dick:

Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark. ...

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous- why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues- every stately or lovely emblazoning- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

Howard said...

In the red triangle, white sharks are called the man in the grey suit.

Wolfe whore white so southern belles would say flauntingly "Oh, Ashley"

Obviously he wanted to tell New Yorkers he was southern by the grace of Gawd.

narciso said...

Yes his last book was kind of dissapointing and back to blood could have been short a 100-150 pages without loss, but it was disturbingly close to the truth.