Someone made the odd, maybe malicious, certainly rash decision to put Tom
Wolfe on the right-hand side of the cover of
Harper's new 150th anniversary
issue, facing Mark Twain, a leonine, earthy, dignified old devil, sitting in
alert repose, apparently listening. A man to whose energetic image the white
suit is incidental. Over on the right-hand side, Wolfe's white suit is
dominant, looking just a shade too big for its shriveled occupant, who gazes
nowhere in particular with a smirk of wooden self-satisfaction.
The bizarre juxtaposition of Wolfe with Twain consummates 30 years'
inflation of the former's modest talents. To read his breathless prose,
shrill with yaps and self-importance, is like having a small dog attack
one's leg. Wolfe's anniversary essay is called, "In the Land of the Rococo
Marxists. Why No One is Celebrating the Second American Century." As Jan. 1,
2000, arrived, Wolfe asks, "Did a single, solitary savant note that the
First American Century had just come to an end and the Second American
Century had begun?" To which, of course, the answer is that Americans saw
the millennial chronology as mostly hype, hooked loosely to the Christian