The Wolfe in the White Suit (w/ Osita Nwanevu) [UNLOCKED]

Know Your Enemy

We took the holiday week off, so we're sharing an episode from behind the paywall. Coming soon: new episodes on The Biden Problem, SCOTUS, and Israeli illiberalism as an inspiration for the global right.

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In this episode, from January 2024, writer Osita Nwanevu joins for a rip-roaring conversation about legendary prose stylist, "new journalist," and novelist Tom Wolfe. Reviewing a new documentary about Wolfe ("Radical Wolfe" on Netflix), Osita writes, "Behind the ellipses and exclamation points and between the lines of his prose, a lively though often lazy conservative mind was at work, making sense of the half-century that birthed our garish and dismal present, Trump and all."

Answered herein: is Tom Wolfe a good writer? What kind of conservative is he? How does his approach compare to other "new journalists" like Joan Didion and Garry Wills? And what's the deal with the white suit?

Further Reading:

Osita Nwanevu, "The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative," The New Republic, Jan 5, 2023

Tom Wolfe, "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," Esquire, Nov 1963.

— "The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report," New York Magazine, Feb 1972.

— "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s," New York Magazine, June 1972

— The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)

— A Man in Full (1998)

— The Kingdom of Speech (2016)

Peter Augustine Lawler, "What is Southern Stoicism? An Interview with Professor Peter Lawler," Daily Stoic, March 2017

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