Name: Tom Wolfe Collection on Letterman, 1987-98
Uploaded: 2018-05-15T20:13:26.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Wolfe Collection on Letterman, 1987-98' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-05-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Wolfe Collection on Letterman, 1987-98' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-05-15. Transcript available.

Tom Wolfe Collection on Letterman, 1987-98

Thank you very much.
Our next guest is one of America's best reporters and most stylish writers.
His books include the candy-colored tangerine flick Streamline Baby,
The Right Stuff, and now his first novel, right here, entitled The Bonfire of
the Vanities.
Please welcome a truly exceptional writer and one snappy dresser, Tom Wolfe.
Tom?
Hi, Tom.
Good to see you.
Fine, how have you been?
Please have a seat.
You really do always, well, at least every time I've seen you, you look just
terrific.
Thank you very much.
Is there a philosophy behind it?
It's usually a cream-colored suit, isn't it?
Well, it actually used to be a lot more fun than it is now.
When I first came to New York, let's see, it was just about 25 years ago.
It was in the spring.
I went to a little tailor shop to get a white suit for the summertime, which
didn't seem all that unusual to me.
But I picked out a very hot material, silk tweed.
Silk tweed?
Silk tweed.
It looks nice and white and fresh, but you put it on, it's very heavyweight.
So I couldn't wear it in the summer in New York, so I started wearing it in the
late fall.
And I found out this annoyed people tremendously.
Now, why I enjoyed that, I don't know.
We have to get Dr. Freud's Nightline and see, I can't explain that, but it
became fun.
And for about, I'd say for about 10 years it was fun.
But then something happened, men began to sort of let it all go.
When I saw Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman wearing only body paint on the Dick Cavett
show, I knew there was no longer any chance of trying to...
But you've maintained it, you've persevered.
I was almost put out of business again by the movie Saturday Night Fever.
Right, right.
People thought you were trying to be John Travolta.
John Travolta.
And after that, in every shopping mall in America, you'd see the gold chains
and the chest hair set coming out of these boutiques, wearing it with their
white suits.
But, you know, they didn't realize that these suits last about seven or eight
hours.
So I had to, you know...
But you've endured.
I have endured.
Yeah, trends have come and trends have gone, but you're still here in your
cream-colored suit.
Speaking of trends, and we'll get to this book in just a second here.
Speaking of trends, is there a new social trend?
Are there several new trends?
Has anything changed, really?
Is there something we ought to be aware of that maybe we don't?
I do see, now that you've brought it up, something that's happening in the 80s.
You know, people think the 80s has been a quiet, hum-drawn time.
I don't at all.
I think it's been extremely wild.
But there's an entire new vice in the 1980s.
The new vice in America in the 1970s was pornography.
I mean, it got to the point that in a town of about a small town, a small city,
about 200,000, there'd be 14 movie theaters, of which one, as of a couple years
ago, one would be showing Back to the Future, one would be showing Amadeus, let's
say.
No one would go to see it, but it was being shown because it won all these
Academy Awards.
And then, one would be showing the Vein Strippers or some other teenage hemorrhage
picture.
And 11 would be showing so-called X-rated adult films, including places with
screens that would be seven, eight, nine stories high.
Outdoor drive-ins, the better to beam all of these glistening nodes and moistened
folds and stiffened giblets to a panting American country.
But that was the 70s.
There was a proliferation of that then.
That was the new vice.
But in the 80s, the new vice is what I think of as plutography.
Now, pornography is, strictly speaking, the graphic depiction of the acts of
prostitutes.
Plutography is the graphic depiction of the acts of the rich.
And you can see that in my business, journalism.
The magazines that were so hot in the age of pornography, the one-hand
magazines like Penthouse or Playboy or things like that sort of thing.
Tom, you're using phrases that I don't fully understand.
Maybe if you could simplify it for the layman, so to speak.
These are technical journalistic terms.
But these magazines have begun to fail financially.
This grim slide has begun.
And what is taking their place are the plutographic magazines, such as House
and Garden, Architectural Digest, or Connoisseur, Town and Country.
And these show wealthy people enjoying their lives?
It's the graphic depiction of the acts of the rich.
Supposedly, they're telling you about design or about the provenance of antiques
or the history of art.
In fact, they're stimulating you with pictures of how the rich live.
And you'll notice that these magazines not only get thicker in number of pages,
but the pages themselves get thicker and creamier and creamier and velveter and
more and more velvety.
And it's gotten to the point that they are such high quality that you can now
see the thumbprints of the gardeners on the akuba leaves out in front of these
houses and beveled.
I don't read those magazines anymore.
But why is it?
I eat them.
Well, why is it?
Are there more people with that kind of dough now and they like to see how
other people with money are living?
Or does it represent a fantasy to the average American?
Or what is the reason for that?
I think that in the 60s and 70s, it was very bad form for people to flaunt
their wealth.
They wanted it.
I mean, you know, human creature doesn't change all that much.
They wanted it.
It was very bad form to show it.
In the 80s, it has become perfectly okay to show what you've got.
But what shifted to make that attitude rise?
Well, I think there's, well, a new creature has arisen in my estimation.
A new, well, if I can borrow Sinclair Lewis's phrase, a new Babbitt.
A new Babbitt.
Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, and he put the phrase Babbitt into the language, was
a real estate salesman in Cincinnati, about 50 years old, kind of sleek and fat
like a beaver.
A guy who had a pine...
I bought a house from a beaverman, come to think of it.
I think we all have it one time or another.
He bought his Pontiac with it.
And a guy, though, he has a Carlec, a Pontiac, or a Buick, and he thinks if
life really breaks terrifically over the next horizon, you may get a Cadillac.
Right, exactly.
That's pretty much the way I grew up.
I mean, you started with a Chevy, maybe work your way up to a Buick, Oldsmobile,
and so on.
Right, and you belong to, you want to belong to the right church, which in Babbitt's
case was the Presbyterian church.
Sure.
Your wife belongs to the ladies' auxiliary.
She belongs to the bridge club.
That has all changed in my, from what I've seen.
The new Babbitt, far from being 50 years old, is about 27, 28, 29.
Wouldn't drive a Cadillac if you gave it to him.
Because he has to have a Mercedes, a BMW, or an, if he's really strapped, you
know, just on the way up, an Audi 5,000.
Even if it runs over his children, you know, it's just a, sure, chaos, everyone.
Just a habit there.
Because you have to have a, only a German luxury automobile creates the proper
steely crunch as you go up the crushed white pebble driveway of your weekend
house, your summer house.
But what percentage of the population does this represent?
Well, I think in real terms, only about 45%, but...
Well, that's...
That's a huge amount.
But everybody, but everybody, I think, uh, uh, everybody wants it.
Yeah.
Uh, let me ask you about, uh, Chuck Yeager.
You can't turn on television now without seeing Chuck selling, uh, batteries.
That's true.
And you, you, uh, developed a close relationship with this man, I'm guessing,
from the right stuff.
Well, what is your feeling about him when you were working with him and now
that he's out selling batteries?
Well, you know, Chuck Yeager is one of the few thoroughly...
I shouldn't say this.
Well, you're a thoroughly genuine person.
Chuck is one of the few thoroughly genuine...
Well, it would be me and Chuck, and that would be it.
Yeah, you and Chuck, yeah, that's it.
Um, it is true, though.
When, uh, when I first met him, he was, in the last part of his career, he was
in charge of the Air Safety Command in San Bernardino, California.
And, uh, he, he told me, and he, with great sincerity, that he said,
everything that I have ever gotten in, in, in my life has been because of this
blue suit.
And he touched his Air Force officer's, uh, uniform.
And he was very critical of the astronauts.
Uh, well, not so much of them, but of NASA for allowing the astronauts to take
money from Life Magazine.
And his estimation...
That was just the beginning, too, by the way, wasn't it?
Well, that was, his phrase, he said, this was the first bite out of the apple.
That was his, that was his phrase.
As if, by doing so, they had been, uh, they wouldn't be thrown out of the
Garden of Eden.
So now how do you think he reconciles that change in philosophy for himself?
Well, now he makes an absolute fortune.
Sure.
But, uh, so one time I happened to ask him, I said, Chuck, now you're making
all of this money.
Um, what are you going to do with it?
He said, and I, in all sincerity, he says, you know, I don't know.
I think I'll give it to my children, which I understand he has done through a,
a trust fund.
Because, you know, when I retired from the Air Force...
But still a genuine guy, this man, do you think?
He said, before I, he said, before I retired from the Air Force, right after he
said, I retired from the Air Force,
he said, I built my dream house, which was a, a marvelous cabin, a glorified
cabin,
but in, in the foothills of the Sierras, he loves to hunt and fish.
And he says, tell me, he says, what do you do after you've built your dream
house?
Well, that's true.
And I thought it was something that was always stuck in my mind.
And I don't really think the money makes all that much difference.
Yeah, probably not.
Now, this book, by the way, I'm just about finished with this book.
I got like 40 more pages.
And it's, it's a wonderful book.
But I, I want to point out something.
If you're an author and you're, you're writing a book and you're looking to
come on the show,
there's no guarantee I'll read your book, okay?
But, but I did read this one and I found it as all of your stuff, very
enjoyable.
And, good to see you again.
Well, thank you.
Why the Depression?
Paul, you know, here's the question.
The first question I'm going to ask our next guest when he comes out here, as
soon as he's
going to sit, I'm going to say, what will the 90s be like?
Okay.
Great.
It's going to be my first question.
And if anybody should know.
Well, he should know, sure.
I'm going to answer it right now.
Well, what will the 90s be like?
I guess I should have done this earlier.
Yeah.
That'll be my first question.
Our next, next guest's books include The Right Stuff and his most recent book,
right
here, The Bonfire of the Vanities.
It's also been made into a major motion picture.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the program, Tom Wolfe.
Tom.
Thank you for coming back.
Have a seat.
Tom, what will the 90s be like?
It's funny.
I never guessed that you would ask that question.
And it's a spellbinder.
I think it's a hangover is the shortest way, is the short answer.
Now, people question you about that because you have a way of, in one phrase or
one sentence,
characterizing decades, I guess, right?
That's right.
You see, usually, at the outset, I was smart about this.
In the 1970s, I waited until 1976.
And then I characterized the 1970s, and I got away with it.
I called it the me decade.
The me decade was the 70s.
But you waited until it was half over before you felt safe enough to do that.
But now you appeal to my vanities, and this I can't resist, unfortunately.
I do think it's going to be like a big, cold shower.
A big, cold shower?
A big, cold shower.
It's the decade of the cold shower, Paul.
And so if you can find a way to invest in cold showers, you're in good shape.
But it's hard to do.
No, but the 80s, I always thought of as a period of money fever.
I mean, there was just money in the air.
It seemed to be what everybody was interes