Everything New Is Old Again

One of the founders of what was once called New Journalism popped up in the Times today, and yeesh, it's amazing how dated the writing of one Thomas Kennerly Wolfe has come to sound. Tom Wolfe was one of the biggest names in writing years ago, and one of the things he's best known for is The Right Stuff, a look back at the Mercury space program. So of course they wheeled him out to say something about the anniversary of the moon landing, and he did so in his patented style, which suddenly strikes me as inflexible, insufferably self-indulgent, and as absurdly dated as a paisley ascot.

He had a reasonable point to make—in the long run, humans need to establish themselves in space, and a manned mission to Mars is the obvious next step in that, but nobody ever made the case strongly enough. Okay, coulda been a pretty good opinion piece. But no, Mr. Wolfe being himself, he has to natter on like Grandpa Simpson, and the style that seemed so refreshing in 1962 is just sad and annoying now. He mentions that John Glenn was regarded as a hero after his return from space, that he was given a parade in New York City, and that during this parade people didn't just cheer, they cried, police officers among them. Fair enough. But here's how he puts it:

During his ticker-tape parade up Broadway, you have never heard such cheers or seen so many thousands of people crying. Big Irish cops, the classic New York breed, were out in the intersections in front of the world, sobbing, blubbering, boo-hoo-ing, with tears streaming down their faces.

At some point between the beginning of the word "sobbing" and the end of the word "boo-hoo-ing," I decided that this was the journalistic equivalent of the '70s live-concert album staple—the drum solo that lasts 11 minutes or so. It only works if the audience has smoked a bunch of weed. And it also came home to me that there are two things you can say about Wolfe's style. One is that nearly a half-century ago he brought a new, distinctive voice to journalism and nonfiction, a voice that used rhythms and colors in arresting and often very effective ways. But Tom Wolfe is way too much in love with the sound of that voice. Good writing is concise. And it calls attention to its subject, not itself. Writers who remember this—Mark Twain comes to mind, and Jane Austen, and Sappho, while we're at it—are read decades, centuries, and milliennia after their deaths. "Eschew surplusage," Twain once said. Well, while Mr. Wolfe seems to still be alive, I've been eschewing his work for a while now, and I'm starting to understand why.