I Am Not Tom Wolfe

[Thanks to those of you who commented after reading my Stuck On Holiness post. It seems that all of you like the diversity of material here, so I will continue to whimsically wend my way through the random and the chancey. Peace.]

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, novelist and social critic Tom Wolfe made the following statements about the digital life (I quote in context):

Mr. Wolfe says he has "no theoretical bias against any of it," but still, he seems to find our relentless digital pitch rather cretinous. "Using the Internet is the modern form of knitting," he continues. "It's something to do with idle hands. When you knitted, though, you actually had something to show for it at the end. Thomas Jefferson used to answer all his mail from the day before as soon as he got up at dawn. In his position, think of the number of emails he'd have had. He never would have been Thomas Jefferson if he'd been scrupulous about answering all these things. I think email is a wonderful time-waster. It's peerless. Here it is," he concludes, "you can establish contact--useless contact--with innumerable human beings."

I am wondering, do you agree with Mr. Wolfe? I don't, fully.

Yes, I agree that the much if not most of the Internet is vacuous, empty, an echoless void. But so much of human ingenuity is this way. Even my very soul grips for God so as to spare itself from the black hole deep within. Nevertheless, much of the contact I make in my daily life is useful, and not useless; and so too of my contact on the WWW. There are gems that I receive here everyday, and I try to hand out as many as I can. No doubt there are times that my gems are tossed to swine, finally trampled beneath cloven hoof. But there is real light shining in many digital places. I am encouraged that many of the brightest lights are not hiding under a bushel. Egads, we all know how dark it can be in here. We also know many people are going to pass through this digital rail station looking for something. Someone, don't you think, needs to have a kiosk set along the platform where travellers might find direction, sustenance or merely a kind word?

Of course, Wolfe is really talking about email, which is indeed an oft-abused excuse for simply reminding others of one's existence. But I think his comments, or at least how they are presented by the interviewer, hint at damning the whole of the Internet. And the Internet might be damnable. But it would be wrong to suggest that no meaningful contact occurs in this medium as it skids to perdition. After all, if no meaningful contact is established through digitally printed words, why would Wolfe be content as a novelist, since there is not much meaningful contact in his preferred medium either? And really blogging is little more than email on a grander scale, only without the rather ignominious pestering of readers by knocking on their email boxes. People come to read blogs intentionally, bringing with them even an interest in engaging the author of a particular essay in a bona-fide one-on-one. You can't find that sort of thing anywhere else, even in a Tom Wolfe essay.

But I would be remiss to leave you with the impression that Wolfe said nothing interesting. For you writers (and avid readers) out there, I urge you to read the whole piece. It's quite enlightening.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.