100 New Yorkers of the 1970s Part 35

In an interview at his office in the _Times_ building, the affable, articulate Wicker responds to an opening question about whether journalists are less accurate today than in the past by saying, "No, I don't think they ever were very accurate. It's hard to get pinpoint accuracy under pressure. I think that's an inherent weakness of daily journalism. But you have to consider that there are something like eight million words a day coming in here. It's very tough to double-check all of that by deadline. I think of journalism as being kind of like an early alert system."

In his column, Wicker has never been told what to write, never had an article killed or edited, and never been urged to conform to the _Times_ editorial policy.

Some of his pieces look best in retrospect -- for example, the three columns he wrote in September and October 1977 about the dangers of storing nuclear waste. The sympathy with which he treated the prison death of convict George Jackson in a 1971 column caught the attention of inmates everywhere, and during the uprising at New York's Attica prison later that year, he was called in as a mediator and official observer. His book about the uprising, _A Time To Die_, (1975), won him two major literary awards and was made a Book of the Month Club selection.

An engaging public speaker who travels widely, he spent two months in Africa last year. At present, he is preparing a long article on Richard Nixon that will appear in the _Sunday Times_ magazine this August to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the ex-president's resignation.

Asked for his opinion on the seeming resurgence of Nixon as a public figure, Wicker smiles and says, "I'm sure Al Capone could have drawn a crowd the day he got out of prison. I don't think Nixon has been revived. He never was dead in that sense. He left the White House under a cloud, yet he retained, I am sure, millions of people who supported him.

... I myself have always discounted these reports that some future Republican president might appoint him a sort of roving amba.s.sador. As far as his giving speeches at big colleges is concerned, I think that's all right. He may have made mistakes, but I myself would find it very interesting to read an article by Richard Nixon about foreign affairs. I think he's a man of intelligence and knowledge in this area."

For the past five years, Wicker has been married to Pamela Hill, vice president of ABC News and executive producer of the network's doc.u.mentary productions. They live in a four-story brownstone on the Upper East Side. Though both enjoy cooking, their busy schedules call for many visits to local restaurants.

Wicker's next book is a historical novel about the American Civil War that he has been researching for several years. "It probably won't be completed until 1981," he says, "but I expect it to be the best book I have ever done. It's certainly the one I'm putting the most effort into. At the same time, the column is my first priority. That's the clock I punch. ...

My experience is, the more you write, the better you get at it. It's a business in which you keep sharpening your tools all the time."

EASTSIDER TOM WOLFE Avant-garde author talks about _The Right Stuff_

10-6-79

During New York City's newspaper strike of 1963, a 31-year-old _Herald Tribune_ reporter named Tom Wolfe visited California in order to write an article for _Esquire_ magazine about the souped-up, customized cars and the crowd they attracted. When _Esquire's_ deadline arrived, Wolfe was unable to pull the article together, so he typed out his largely impressionistic notes and sent them to the editor, who decided to run "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" exactly as written.

Thus was Tom Wolfe established as one of the most important new talents in American journalism.

Today he is generally recognized as the foremost proponent of what might be called the nonfiction short story. The majority of his eight books are collections of factual articles written in the style of fiction. His latest effort, _The Right Stuff_ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $12.95), is about the seven Mercury astronauts and the world of military flying. Over c.o.c.ktails at the Isle of Capri, a restaurant not far from his Eastside apartment, the slender, gentlemanly, and slightly bashful author spoke at length about his new book and a dozen other subjects. Dressed in a one-b.u.t.ton, swallowtail, yellow pinstriped suit -- "it's kind of an early Duke of Windsor" -- he poured forth his colorful phrases in a rich, soothing, mildly Southern accent that rang with sincerity.

"I began this book in 1972, when _Rolling Stone_ asked me to go down to the Cape and cover Apollo 17. Somewhat to my surprise, I became quite interested in the whole business of: what's the makeup of someone who's willing to sit on top of a rocket and let you light the candle? And I ended up writing four stories for _Rolling Stone_ ... in about a month.

And I thought if I spent a couple of months in expanding them, I'd have a book. Well, it's now 1979 and here we are." He laughed heartily. "It was so difficult that I put it aside every opportunity I had. I wrote three other books in the meantime, to avoid working on it.

"I ended up being more interested in the fraternity of flying than in s.p.a.ce exploration. I found the reactions of people and flying conditions much more fascinating. So the book is really about the right stuff -- the code of bravery that the pilots live by, and the mystical belief about what it takes to be a hot fighter jock.

"Flying has a compet.i.tive structure that's as hotly contested as the world of show business. And the egos are just as big -- in fact, in a way, they're bigger. ... It's hard to top surgeons for sheer ego. I think surgeons are the most egotistical people on the face of the earth, but pilots usually make the playoffs: they're in there."

An excellent caricaturist who has published hundreds of drawings and mounted several major exhibitions, he confessed to being vain about his artwork because "I don't feel as sure of myself as I do in writing." A book of his drawings will come out in 1980. He also has a captioned drawing each month in _Harper's_, the magazine where his wife Sheila works as art director. Tom was a lifelong bachelor until they were married last year.

He arrived in New York in 1962, armed with a Ph.D. from Yale and three years' experience on the _Was.h.i.+ngton Post_. "I really love it in New York. It reminds me of the state fair in Virginia, where I grew up. ... The picture of the East Side really is of the man living in the $525,000 co-op, leaving the building at night with his wife, both clothed in turtleneck sweaters with pieces of barbed wire and jeans, going past a doorman who is dressed like an Austrian Army colonel from 1870."

No relation to the novelist Thomas Wolfe, Tom Wolfe has written only one short piece of fiction in his life. He is now thinking about writing "a _Vanity Fair_ type of novel about New York" as his next major undertaking. In the meantime, he is working on a sequel to _The Painted Word_, his book-length essay abut modern art that appeared in 1975.

"Another thing I'd like to try is a movie script," he added. "I've done one -- a series of vignettes about life in Los Angeles. ... But many talented writers just go bananas in trying to write for the movies. Because they're not in charge of what they're doing. All that a good director can do is keep from ruining the script. He cannot turn a bad script into a good movie. He can turn a good script into a bad movie. And often, I think, it happens, because the director is given a power that he simply should not have."

Another possible project, said Wolfe, is a second volume of _The Right Stuff_, to bring the story up to the $250 million Soviet-American handshake in 1975. The 436-page first volume has been received with acclaim. In the _New York Sunday Times_ book review, C.D.B. Bryan wrote: "It is Tom Wolfe at his very best. ... It is technically accurate, learned, cheeky, risky, touching, tough, compa.s.sionate, nostalgic, wors.h.i.+pful, jingoistic -- it is superb."

An Interview with Tom Wolfe

from _The Westsider_, 11-22-79

Tom Wolfe, one of the most original stylists in American writing today, burst spectacularly on the literary horizon in 1965 with _The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby_, a collection of articles about contemporary American life written as nonfiction.

Wolfe's adoption of stream of consciousness, his unorthodox use of italics and exclamation marks, his repet.i.tion of letters, and his effectiveness in inventing hip phrases with nonsense words and cla.s.sical references, helped establish an entirely new literary form -- the nonfiction short story.

His reputation was cemented by such books as _The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test_, _The Pump House Gang_ and _The Painted Word_, a lengthy essay on modern art. Wolfe sometimes ill.u.s.trates his work with pen-and ink drawings.

His latest book, _The Right Stuff_, deals with the age of rockets, the early astronauts and the world of military flying. Published in September 1979, it is a critical and commercial success that has already hit the best-seller list.

A tall, slender 48-year-old transplanted Southerner with a rich baritone voice, Wolfe speaks softly, chooses his word carefully, and exhibits a kind of schoolboy bashfulness when discussing his own work. A New Yorker since 1962, he lives on the Upper East Side with his wife Sheila, the art director of _Harper's_ magazine. On the day of our interview, Wolfe is wearing his customary one-b.u.t.ton, swallow-tailed, yellow pin stripe suit, which he describes as "early Duke of Windsor."

Q: What made you decide to write this book?

A: Back in 1972, Rolling Stone asked me to go down to the Cape and cover Apollo 17. That was the last mission to the moon. ... Somewhat to my surprise, I really became quite interested in the whole business of what's the makeup of someone who's willing to sit on top of a rocket and let you light the candle? And I ended up writing four stories for _Rolling Stone_ in about a month. And I thought if I spent a couple of months in expanding them, I'd have a book. Well, it's now 1979 and here we are."

(He laughs.) It was so difficult that I put it aside every opportunity I had.

I wrote three other books in the meantime, to avoid working on it.

I ended up being more interested in the fraternity of flying than in s.p.a.ce exploration. I found the reactions of people and flying conditions much more fascinating. So the book is really about the right stuff -- the code of bravery that the pilots live by, and the mystical belief about what it takes to be a hot fighter jock, as the expression goes. I became interested in people like Chuck Yeager, who broke the sound barrier back in 1947.

When the seven Mercury astronauts were chosen, they were not the seven hottest test pilots in America, although they were presented as such at the time. The arrival of the astronauts as a type completely upset the compet.i.tive hierarchy of flying.

Flying has a compet.i.tive structure that's as hotly contested as the world of show business. And the egos are just as big -- in fact, in a way, they're bigger. . ... It's hard to top surgeons for sheer ego. I think surgeons are the most egotistical people on the face of the earth, but pilots usually make the playoffs: they're in there.

Q: Speaking of your other books: how do you manage to know all the hip phrases of the day? Do you spend a lot of time with teenagers?

A: At one time, people thought I was some sort of medium who hung around with children to pick up what young people were thinking and doing. Well, that interested me very much in the '60s, when suddenly young people were doing extraordinary things -- things they had never done, which really boiled down to living lives that they controlled, sometimes in a communal way, going with their own styles, rather than imitating that of their elders. So it was fascinating. I made a point of learning about it.

Sometimes now I turn on the radio and I don't recognize a single song on the charts. Right now I have no idea what any of the top 20 singles are.

And I have the feeling that it's probably not worth finding out, because we're now in a phase where we're just filling in the s.p.a.ces of what was introduced by rock and the Beatles and the Grateful Dead and so on.

There's nothing very new, I don't think. Maybe I'm wrong.

Q: How do you choose your clothes?

A: Right now I'm in the phase of pretentiousness. During the late '60s I had a lot of fun by making mild departures in style -- wearing white suits instead of blue suits, things like that. That was very shocking and unusual in 1963. Suddenly things reached a point beyond which it really wasn't worth going, as far as I was concerned, when Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman appeared on the _d.i.c.k Cavett Show_ in body paint.

There's one direction in which clothes can go that still annoys the h.e.l.l out of people, and that's pretentiousness. If you wear double-breasted waistcoats, which I rather like, that annoys people. Spats more than annoy people: they infuriate people. Try it sometime if you don't believe me.

They think that this is an affront. It stirs up all sorts of resentment. We're in a period now in which the picture of the East Side really is of the man living in the $525,000 co-op, leaving the building at night, both clothed in turtleneck sweaters with pieces of barbed wire and jeans, going past a doorman who is dressed like an Austrian Army colonel from 1870.

Q: Do you do a lot of drawing?

A: I have a regular feature in _Harper's_. I do one large drawing each month, with a caption.

Q: What's your artistic background?

A: I never was trained in art. I worked for a commercial artist a number of summers when I was in high school. And I learned anatomy from drawing boxers in _Ring_ magazine. It was the only way I could think of to learn anatomy.

I've had two gallery shows of drawings. ... And I'll have a book of drawings coming out next year. I find myself very vain about my drawing. I guess I don't feel as sure of myself as I do in writing; therefore I'm always straining to get people's reactions to what I've drawn.

What I do mostly is caricature. I try not to make them too cartoony. This is a period that absolutely cries out for good caricature. Part of it is that the great caricaturists used to be people who were determined to be fine artists. Every artist, whether he was good or bad, learned anatomy very thoroughly. He learned how to render landscapes, buildings, and learned something about costume. So the ones who didn't make it as easel painters might turn to doing caricature, and some of them were spectacular.

We all grow up thinking we're in an era of progress, because we have had so much technological progress. But it simply doesn't work that way in art and literature. We're living in an era -- to use Mencken's phrase -- of the "Sahara of the beaux arts."