What does a fellow like me do when everybody else thinks a talk is fabul-ous but he himself judges it shoddy? That was my situation last week at the end of an address by the celebrated writer Tom Wolfe.
Even I was taken with Wolfe’s costume, however. Wearing his trademark brilliant white suit complete with a vest featuring white buttons, along with shoes striped in white and black and socks interwoven with white, this 69-year-old lite-rary lion evoked applause on sight. When, in the course of his speech, he first pulled out white half-glasses, the audience laughed appreciation.
Like others, I had come filled with expectation. My experience had been like that of the fellow sitting next to me, Kevin Honan, State Representative from Allston-Brighton. “I’ve heard rave reviews about him,” said my neighbor. And his wife, Mary Honan, added: “This man is a giant in literature.”
A friend in the row behind had a more personal reason for being there. “He was an old beau of mine at Yale,” she confided.
Wolfe’s announced title was “Manliness,” an unlikely topic for the Ken-nedy School of Government to host. But it was given something of a political context in the introduction by Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard government profes-sor. Mansfield described the current era in American history as “a time of victim-hood, a soft squishy time.”
To my disappointment, Wolfe himself spoke in a rambling, disordered style. His speech was often labored, halting and, to my mind, dull. Even he admit-ted going on too long, something like an hour and a quarter. Had the talk ap-proached the brilliance of his writing, I would not have minded. To judge from the brief interviews I did afterward, other people did not care about its length.
Here, in absurdly abbreviated form, is a summary of Wolfe’s message:
By reasons of their genetic inheritance, males are inherently aggressive. Their natural instinct is to be combative and the worst thing you can do is to “diss” them, that is insult their dignity. That will inevitably lead them to fight and fighting is what comes natural.
At this stage in history, however, American males are becoming decadent because society is suppressing their combativeness. After World War II, American intellectuals fell under the sway of European intellectuals. It’s the spirit of irony and contempt, characteristic of these thinkers, that has broken the spirit of boys and men here.
Why, it has gotten so bad that a lot of young men in colleges and universi-ties are not keen on going off to get killed. A survey has shown that eighty per-cent of Harvard students would not serve in the wartime military unless they ap-proved of the particular war. How many of them have ever met anybody who has served in the military?
The armed forces themselves have been weakened by the inclusion of women. It is ridiculous to see the unequal ranks of cadets marching at West Point, big guys and small women.
Still, “the male spirit does not die.” It finds expression, among other plac-es, in high-profile team sports. And the sports craze felt by so many Americans gives evidence of the old spirit of fight.
Most people, I suppose, do not take all of this very seriously. Rather, they regard Tom Wolfe as a performer, a witty manipulator of words out to amuse people, not instruct them.
However, I found in this material a lot of political implications that I do not much like. For me, it’s a welcome sign of progress in human relations that American males have taken on more of the qualities and values normally asso-ciated with women. And I am glad that women have moved into the mainstream of more and more American institutions.
I especially welcome the readiness of young men to be discerning about whether or not to enter the armed forces. That they have become cautious about the wars which they will fight seems to me a sign of social maturity rather than effeteness.
I agree that political correctness may distort our views about important areas of our common life. We do in fact need sharp-eyed people to warn us about the distorting effects of an artificially imposed set of beliefs. But these prophets must be truly discerning.
Perhaps it’s a sign of my advanced years that I regard the great American celebrity system with growing skepticism. Yes, I can be entertained by the grandstanding of Donald Trump of and even some of Dennis Rodham’s antics. But when Tom Wolfe, a man of some literary reputation, gives a speech that is riddled with weak generalizations and dubious historical analysis, then I must stand against the consensus of fellow audience members.
The advance of years has freed me to dissent from the crowd. I now feel entitled to take a contrarian view, even if I may be wrong. For this, as for so much else in advanced age, I feel grateful.
Richard Griffin