… of author Tom Wolfe. He’s 76.
“I can’t read him because he’s such a bad writer,” Irving said of Wolfe. When Solomon added that “Bonfire of the Vanities” author Wolfe is “having a war” with Updike and Mailer, Irving dismissed the notion out of hand: “I don’t think it’s a war because you can’t have a war between a pawn and a king, can you?”
Irving described Wolfe’s novels as “yak” and “journalistic hyperbole described as fiction … He’s a journalist … he can’t create a character. He can’t create a situation.”
… of author John Irving. He’s 64.
Reached through his publisher, Wolfe responded in writing. “Why does he sputter and foam so?” he asked about Irving. “Because he, like Updike and Mailer, has panicked. All three have seen the handwriting on the wall, and it reads: ‘A Man in Full.'”
If the literary trio don’t embrace “full-blooded realism,” Wolfe warns, “then their reputations are finished.” He also offers Irving some additional literary advice: “Irving needs to get up off his bottom and leave that farm in Vermont or wherever it is he stays and start living again. It wouldn’t be that hard. All he’d have to do is get out and take a deep breath and talk to people and see things and rediscover the fabulous and wonderfully bizarre country around him: America.”
… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Lou Reed. He’s 64.
The influence of the Velvet Underground on rock greatly exceeds their sales figures and chart numbers. They are one of the most important rock and roll bands of all time, laying the groundwork in the Sixties for many tangents rock music would take in ensuing decades. Yet just two of their four original studio albums ever even made Billboard’s Top 200, and that pair – The Velvet Underground and Nico (#171) and White Light/White Heat (#199) – only barely did so. If ever a band was “ahead of its time,” it was the Velvet Underground. Brian Eno, cofounder of Roxy Music and producer of U2 and others, put it best when he said that although the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many albums, everyone who bought one went on to form a band. The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, U2, R.E.M., Roxy Music and Sonic Youth have all cited the Velvet Underground as a major influence. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum)
… of Jon Bon Jovi. New Jersey’s second most famous rock-and-roller is 44.
Wolfe does, indeed have trouble with characters. He tends to develop them by describing their clothing. I’m not sure Wolfe’s figured out how to end a story, either. “Bonfire” was a great book that petered out; “Man In Full” was better, but not a lot of impact.
But Irving has been writing the same book over and over for years. I gave up on him after “Hotel New Hampshire.” His characters are like sitcom stock: Orphan, wrestler, batty-old-guy, whacky next door neighbor…
Wolfe, who is one of my favorite writers, and Irving, who I took a class from in college, are two biggies, no doubt. But when all is said and done, Wolfe’s writing — his journalism — changed literature; Irving’s didn’t.