PLUMBER OF THE SOCIAL DEPTHS:

Mummy Wrap: an interview with Tom Wolfe (George Neumayr, 1/10/2005, American Spectator)

TAS: What do you predict for 21st-century journalism?

Tom Wolfe: I have no predictions. But I am struck by one thing: Try to think of a single important idea that has ever come out of these media. The fact is they are technically less advanced than print at getting across ideas and theories and simply explaining things in a way that can change history.

I am struck by the fact that Karl Marx, this unpleasant man sitting alone in the British museum writing these abstruse essays, really did change the world. Look at Darwin. My God, what a powerful theory. Incidentally, I give that one about 40 more years, and it will go down in flames.

TAS: Why 40 years?

Tom Wolfe: Look at the Big Bang. That's a fairly recent theory, and it is already burning out. There are too many scientists who are saying this is rubbish. Just think about the theory of the Big Bang or this ridiculous theory about where the first cell came from. Now they say it probably came from outer space when an asteroid hit the earth and a few of these things bounced out. It is because of all this silly stuff that Darwinism is going to go down in flames.

TAS: Will the novel survive the age of the Internet?

Tom Wolfe: No, the novel is committing suicide as fast as it can by turning its back on the world. The best writers are in masters of fine arts courses and they are encouraged to turn their backs on the world, not to get their hands dirty. They are told, never mind about all this social muck and write about your psychological relationship with your lover.

Had Tolstoy not written about the class structure in Russia, Anna Karenina would come across as just a soap opera. Tolstoy knew the social setting very well and set it so carefully. Without that Anna Karenina would have been forgotten like any other popular romance.

A novel of psychological depth without social depth isn't worth an awful lot because we are all individuals caught in an enormous web that consists of other people. It is in the social setting that the psychological battles take place. You simply cannot separate the psychological from the social.