Tom Wolfe died Tuesday, and in doing so left us a gift — all Americans, really, but particularly millennials. I suppose it’s very millennial to write an obituary of one of the greatest American writers of this modern age by framing it around what he gave us — who are we, a generation so self-absorbed yet so full of our own virtue, that we should process the loss of him through our lens — but it was Wolfe himself who once observed, “Fortunately the world is full of people with information-compulsion who want to tell you their stories … They’re some of the greatest allies that any writer has.” To that end, maybe even Wolfe would have understood.
In his works and in his life, Wolfe was everything a typical millennial lacks. He wrote several books that were not only expansive and fresh but brilliant, articulate observations of American life. He loved America not with the simple patriotism of a member of the military but as one who enjoyed a profound fascination with her; a love affair that started as hippy love fest and ended at the ballet. Observant, articulate, inventive, bold, witty — but also humble, genteel, and polite. Who wouldn’t benefit from such traits?
The New York Times observed Wolfe was a writer “who found delight in lacerating the pretentiousness of others.” How very different from the arrogant preening of so many millennials who at once play expert and ignorant, know-it-all bully and victim — who can’t even tell they’re being lacerated they’re so pretentious. While millennials on Twitter (I’m also guilty of this) come up with absurd polls or memes, or #hashtag this or #hashtag that, Wolfe simply told us what he thought based on how he saw it all really going down. No one utilized onomatopoeia the way he did and I doubt anyone will again.
The Atlantic said, “His talent as a writer and caricaturist was evident from the start in his verbal pyrotechnics and perfect mimicry of speech patterns, his meticulous reporting, and his creative use of pop language and explosive punctuation.” Whereas millennials weave themselves into every story through selfies they post on Snapchat and Instagram, Wolfe observed the story from afar and painted it meticulously — whether it was a bond trader working on Wall Street, a man in the space program with the “right stuff,” or an African-American lawyer living in Atlanta — so he could show us what we needed to know about American life.
Even when it came time to portray millennials in his novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, which was about the hook-up culture, he was more right than he was wrong — and that’s amazing considering he was an elderly man already, writing from the point of view of a freshman girl. It’s not his best work, nor is it my personal favorite, but if that’s what he thinks of millennials, they have a lot of work to do.
Even if he never said these words out loud, his work is so profound that this generation should want more than to remain self-absorbed, preening, arrogant, and lazy, to look into the skies and see if they have the right stuff, to take a glance at Wall Street and say, ‘I think I’ll make good choices,’ or to simply walk down the streets of New York in a three-piece white suit like you give a damn. As Wolfe once said, “Everybody, everybody everywhere, has their own movie going, their own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.”
He’s talking to millennials — they too can learn from the “Master of the Universe.”
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
