Me and Tom Wolfe Writing Letters in Downtown Manhattan After the War
When I completed my master’s degree in education and was organizing to launch my teaching career, the Vietnam war was winding down and there was a record glut on the market — no jobs. So I substitute taught at many schools, commercial fished for lobster off the New England shore, wrote hundreds of stories and poems, applied for a million jobs, and read a lot. Mostly American novelists: Hemingway and his clan. Plus, the hot writers of the 70s: Kurt Vonnegut, and Tom Wolfe who had written “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and even a book on art criticism, “The Painted Word.”
I finally landed a job in a New York City prep school teaching art history and economics, but when I shipped out on a topsail schooner early one year to study navigation and marine science, upon return my job was (deservedly) gone. I said to my dad, right before he died, “I’d rather be a writer anyway — then I can teach 1000 people.” And I started commuting to Manhattan every day, where Wolfe lived and hobnobbed with Brooke Astor and Truman Capote, and I began my writing career out of a borrowed apartment. Even though my first (and only) two submissions were actually picked up by the New York Times, I lacked confidence. When I read Tom Wolfe in particular, I half-wanted to throw in the towel. His phrases were dazzling, his level of “hip” unassailable: he dressed in creamy white suits, Gatsby collars, and fedoras. He actually covered a party for the Black Panthers thrown by Leonard Bernstein. What’s more, he had coined the name of an entire school of journalism: “the new journalism.” In despair, I wrote him a letter.
I don’t have my original letter, of course, and it is not likely framed on the wall of his study, but it was to the effect: “Dear Mr. Wolfe: Every time I write something that I think is original or the next phase, I see that you have already done it. Why do I bother?”
His answer, in audaciously elaborate calligraphy that I best describe as what you might see on a 17th century map:
Dear Mr. Grauer,
The New Journalism isn’t very new anymore, but it does not matter. The techniques are now available to all. They can be used for Social Consequence or for Apolitical Work, but the main thing, in my view, is that the Process of DISCOVERY and TECHNICAL VIRTUOSITY be completed. The rest is secondary (including the “next phase”, if any).
Best wishes,
Tom Wolfe
November 3, 1976
Right after that I got a job at a high school I had forgotten I ever applied to, teaching history and English. I have taught thousands of lessons since then, never for a single day losing sight of the sublime balance of the “process of discovery” with “technical virtuosity”. What’s more, I have written this magic balance into thousands of lesson plans, and delivered it in thousands of student lessons. There are no bounds to the joy I have that most of my writing went into lesson plans rather than novels or satirical essays. Clinical lesson planning isn’t very new anymore, but it does not matter. The deep connection I feel with those I have taught all these years is “the main thing”, something I could never transcend in any other field.
I know the exact words of his letter to me because I am looking straight at them now, framed, on the wall of my office, as they have been for most of the last four decades.
Dr. Stuart Grauer is the author of the book Fearless Teaching. He is also the founder and Head of School at The Grauer School in Encinitas, California, which is dedicated to preparing tomorrow’s leaders for roles in our global community through learning by discovery, and providing a humanitarian education combining rigorous academics with authentic relationships, community service and inclusion. Additionally, Dr. Grauer is a worldwide authority in the Small Schools Movement.
