--- title: 10 Questions for Tom Wolfe | TIME description: Tom Wolfe has been upending the literary world with societal critiques and wild punctuation for almost half a century canonical: https://time.com/video/HFNVrqfV/ og:title: 10 Questions for Tom Wolfe og:description: Tom Wolfe has been upending the literary world with societal critiques and wild punctuation for almost half a century og:url: https://time.com/video/HFNVrqfV/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/HFNVrqfV/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for Tom Wolfe twitter:description: Tom Wolfe has been upending the literary world with societal critiques and wild punctuation for almost half a century twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/HFNVrqfV/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for Tom Wolfe > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for Tom Wolfe [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Tom Wolfe](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/HFNVrqfV.m3u8) (6:17)  _Published 2008-08-27. Tom Wolfe has been upending the literary world with societal critiques and wild punctuation for almost half a century_ --- Jul 27, 2023 12:59 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Dick Wolf by the Numbers](/video/LivDnbu9/) ### Dick Wolf by the Numbers [Tom Wolfe, Author and Satirist of American Culture, Dies at 88](/video/3oOfCiUx/) ### Tom Wolfe, Author and Satirist of American Culture, Dies at 88 [Tom Wolf Commencement Speech](/video/kzV3L1N4/) ### Tom Wolf Commencement Speech --- ## Transcript >> I'm Radhika Jones from TIME Magazine and I recently sat down with the author, Tom Wolfe whose classic account of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, the Electric Kool- Aid Acid Test has been reissued in paperback this month on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. He answered a few questions from TIME readers. Mr. Wolfe, thanks for joining us. >> My pleasure. My pleasure. >> Posted by [ unk ] in Coimbatore, India. When did you first realize that you wanted to write? >> It was very early in my life, I was-- I think 6 years old. My father was an agronomist and agricultural scientist. At that time when that was really an exciting-- an exciting field, but at the moment that I was first aware that he worked-- that he went to work everyday and all that kind of thing, he was editing a farm magazine, but I would see him at home writing. He had a terrible handwriting literally on yellow legal pads and somehow this would be converted in two weeks later into this pristine type on a page as a great time in life when comic strips or magic there is this what you see as magical. I said this is just right. He just stays at home and writes and then there's fabulous thing comes out. So, that was my intention from the very beginning. >> I am Charlotte Simmons, Bonfire of the Vanities and Acid Test each examines a specific aspect of American society at a particular time. How do you decide which slice of America to tackle? >> I like to read about something that I have heard of first in conversation. In case of let's say I am Charlotte Simmons, while I was working on A Man in Full, I started hearing stories about campus life and particularly about, you know, coed dorms. >> Uh huh. >> I couldn't believe the scarcity of literature about coed dorms and here's the potentially salacious subject. Why would they-- wasn't anybody looking at it? The other thing is by this time, universities were creating moral standards. >> Right. >> You know, something like the right to women. It didn't come out of a church. >> No. >> It did come out of the universities. So for those two reasons I got interested and I started going around colleges. >> You were once critical of contemporary novelist and their reluctance to engage in contemporary issues. What are your feelings about the current state of the novel? >> There's so little of that now. It's just pathetic and it's pathetic all over the Western world. What happened here is really sad. It really is. There was a great-- the great period of American Literature. The only great period of American Literature was from 1893 to 1939. 1893 was the year that Stephen Crane published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which the first American urban novel. >> Uh huh. >> And the final in the sequence is John Steinbeck in 1939 with The Grapes of Wrath. Now, that was such a great period that it was referred to over and over again as the, you know, the flowering of American Literature and it influenced writers all over the world. And in France, they were going for the psychological to see more elegant than all those mucking around in real life and it happened in the Master of Fine Arts programs of universities. That's where writers come from now, the Master of Fine Arts programs. I mean, you add up the education of the college education of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, you would-- you got to about spring break of a freshman year. But today, they're all getting Master of Fine Arts programs and they're told, you know, write about what you know about your inner psychology. Never mind your external troubles and it's just boring. >> Well and it's funny because, of course, as you were saying earlier, the thing to do is to write about what you don't know. >> Well, that's my-- Well, that's the journalist to me. I'd like to write about what I don't know. What I do I know about Miami? That's where this book is set. What I did know about plantation in Georgia? Nothing and The Man in Full. You know, it's not that working nonfiction reporting is gonna give you just colorful facts; it's going to stimulate your imagination. >> Uh huh. >> It's gonna make you think of things you never thought of. >> This is from David Royce in Westport, Connecticut. Do you ever get tired of being known for the white suit? >> I don't get tired of the white suit. It's done me so much good. I cannot tell you. When I first came to New York as a reporter and it's always been my goals. When finally got a job in the New York Herald Tribune, I went to the store and I bought a white suit. Well, that was unusual in Richmond, Virginia where I grow up. My father used to have white linen suit even though it was very conservatively cut and it's just annoyed people beyond belief, but they didn't know what to say. And the family isn't getting dressed in the morning for the first time became fan. I don't know what that says about me. I don't have Dr. Freud's Night Live. And then they have another very practical event, but not knowing after that I published my first book. >> Uh huh. >> And I was used to interviewing other people and I thought I was pre- exhibit that. I never had an interview in my life and I quickly found out I was terrible at it. I was never relaxed. I had no idea what to say. I said I've really blown that and then I read the piece and essentially the piece said, " Isn't he an interesting man he wears white suits ?" And so it was a good 10 years that I had white suits where a substitute for a personality. I must confess sometimes I do not wear a necktie. 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