Tom Wolfe is, in many ways, an outrageous figure - with his white suit and cane, his glib social analyses, and his delusions of grandeur. For three decades he has been saying that his minutely researched books herald 'a revolution' in literature, which is bound to 'sweep the arts in America, making many prestigious artists . . . appear effete and irrelevant'. Over the years, a lot of these effete and irrelevant artists - John Updike, Norman Mailer, Jonathan Franzen - have launched tirades against him. The most concise comes from John Irving, commenting red-faced and furious on live TV: 'Wolfe's problem is, he can't bleeping write! He's not a writer! Just crack one of his bleeping books! Try reading one bleeping sentence! You'll gag before you can finish it! He doesn't even write literature - he writes . . . yak! He doesn't write novels - he writes journalistic hyperbole!' These comments, graciously reported by Wolfe himself, don't seem entirely fair to me. They do, however, perfectly describe his bloody awful new novel I am Charlotte Simmons.

LRB 6 January 2005 | PDF Download