Nearing The End

Oh, no!

I've spent three months devouring with delight the written work of Tom Wolfe. Prodigious over a lengthy 60-year career, Tom wrote 18 books and 110 magazine articles. As euphoric as I've been reading his Promethean oeuvre, I'm equally saddened realizing I'm near the end. I've read all of Wolfe's major works (e.g., "The Right Stuff", "Radical Chic", "Back to Blood") and am almost done with lesser-known stuff. Worth noting is that even these pieces -- on subjects you don't expect to care about (like the history of architecture) -- are fascinatingly presented. Tom makes them come alive with humor and insight.

I can't nudge Wolfe into writing more since he's, um, dead so the only alternative is to dive into his literary archive. It's housed at the New York Public Library. I'm agog to go there next year and explore Tom's drafts, correspondence and personal memorabilia. I also want to visit the archive to pay respect to a hierophant. 

In the last book I read ("Hooking Up") there are several passages with éclat:

- "...sitting there as primly erect as a 13-year old girl on a horse at a horse show."

- "...her prose style...had a handicapped parking sticker."

- "this big egomaniac garruling around town and batting everyone over the head with his ego as if it were a pig bladder."

- "Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity."

- "...wringing his heart out and pouring soul all over you."

Tom Wolfe is a writer whose artistic effort deserves acclaim. I, for one, am applauding.