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IV. Capstone: Style and Content: When Worlds Collide. (Draft)
No better description of Wolfe’s style in The Right Stuff can be found in Chapter Five when the astronauts selected for the manned space mission were introduced to a large group of reporters; “Without another word, all these grim little crawling beggar figures began advancing toward them, elbowing and hipping one another out of the way, growling and muttering, but never looking at each other, since they had their cameras screwed into their eye sockets and remained concentrated on Gus and the six other pilots at the table in the most obsessive way, like a swarm of root weevils which, no matter how much energy they might expend in all directions trying to muscle one another out of the way, keep their craving beaks homed in on the juicy stuff that the whole swarm had sensed--until they were all over them, within inches of their faces in some cases, poking their mechanical beaks into everything but their belly buttons.” (Wolfe, 86)
All one sentence, Wolfe described the most defining moment in the novel. Not the astronaut backgrounds, their qualifications, selections, the training and the launches, but the reaction of the media to the introduction. Knotted together is a complex repetitive arrangement that is exploited by the striking metaphor of the root weevil. His father was an agricultural scientist. (achievement.org) Well within the range of civil, Wolfe has provided the keenest insight into the dawn of the Space Age, April, 1959. Again, Wolfe used the herd mentality to give yet another insight into the ravenous press corps that couldn’t get enough of this incredible new discovery; “ It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted independence, were a great colonial animal, an animal made up of countless clustered organisms responding to a single nervous system.” (95)
Hunter S. Thompson, or by his acronym, HST, also had a close encounter that would live on in the memory of Americans, but he wasn’t as civil, his style was coined gonzo. (Britannica) Purely a unique style of his own creation, HST is a central character in his novel about his cross-country trek during the presidential election of 1972. HST isn’t as accurate in his description of the characters he meets along the way, he isn’t also as accurate in predicting the outcome of the election. In Miami following the Republican convention when Nixon was nominated to the now familiar shout of “Four More Years,” made famous by the Republican Youth, HST described to Bobo the pimp outside the Fontainebleau the strategy behind the GOP;
“Nixon sold the party for the next twenty years by setting up an Agnew/Kennedy race in ‘76...he did it for the same reason he’s done everything else since he first got into politics--to make sure he gets elected.”
Further down, in the next paragraph, HST’s style becomes more uncivil;
“F...k the polls. They always follow reality instead of predicting it...But the real reason he turned the party over to the Agnew/Goldwater wing is that he knows most of the old-line Democrats who just got stomped by McGovern for the nomination wouldn’t mind seeing George get taken out in ‘72 if they know they can get back in the saddle if they’re willing to wait four years.” (HST, 319-320)
Thompson points to the labor force behind the “Humphrey/(George) Meany Democrats” as the bloc that would hand Nixon the victory. As for Nixon himself, HST notes the incumbent will get nervous if his lead slips and “if that Watergate case ever gets into court he might get very nervous.” (327) Thompson was partially right about the election, but got it wrong on ‘76; Jimmy Carter won against Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned because Watergate did get into court. Insight throughout Fear and Loathing is primary, through the view of Thompson in the first person. Laced with profanity and meandering throughout the text, it provides still the most coherent portrayal of one of the most important elections of the 20th century, without a doubt light years away from the one that preceded it when Nixon first took office after beating Hubert Humphrey.
If Wolfe wrote for the sense of an historical event, HST took part in it; if Wolfe gave his account in descriptions that were to be read by not just the average person, it was directed at academia. HST wrote for the sake of writing and broke every rule in the process, so much for an effort to define style. If Wolfe set the standards for style, HST translated that style through copia into language that those who didn’t know what “Tricky Dick,” meant or “Dick Nixon Before he Dicks You,” it became clear in his writing. To even consider attempting to emulate their style or genius would be an exercise in futility, it can’t be done. Perhaps, somewhere, where those two literary worlds collide, there is an infinitesimally small space in between.
References:
Wolfe, T., The Right Stuff, New York, Picador, 1979
Thompson, H.S., Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1973
Wolfe’s father, Tom Wolfe | Academy of Achievement
Gonzo, Gonzo journalism | literary genre | Britannica
‘76 Election, United States presidential election of 1976 | United States government | Britannica
Image: 7 astronauts, The Original Seven Project Mercury astronauts, Langley Air Force Base, July 1960, Ralph Morse | Christie’s (christies.com)
ENG401B.1002
James L’Angelle
University of Nevada, Reno
Dr. L. Olman, Professor
07 December 2020
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