Tom Wolfe Brain Teaser

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and here he is, our quiz guy, John Chaneski. Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. I have a great quiz for you today.

Now, author Tom Wolfe passed not long ago, and it was a great loss to both fiction and nonfiction, and to the English language in general, as Tom Wolfe really wrote in a very idiosyncratic way.

He came up with phrases or popularized phrases which have a place in the OED and that were only known in certain circles before he popularized them.

So we’re going to do a little quiz about Tom Wolf-isms, if that’s okay.

Great.

Okay.

Great, good.

For example, one of the most famous phrases he popularized, he uses the title of a 1979 book.

Now, it had been around for years, meaning just what is needed.

Wolf’s application of it gave it a stronger sense, like having the qualities to perform a difficult task.

Now, that phrase, do you know what it is?

The right stuff.

Yes, the right stuff.

I was going to say applied to astronauts, but then once you say astronauts, that’s the giveaway.

Yeah, so the right stuff.

Let’s look at some more.

Now, listeners of the show who were born in the 1980s, 90s, or the aughts might need to have it explained to them why Tom Wolfe coined what descriptor for the 1970s?

The me decade?

The me decade.

Yeah.

Do you know why that was?

Well, the 60s were still, they still remembered World War II. People were still concerned about what they could do for each other and for the country and rebuilding. Once they got into the 70s, people were more inwardly directed. So that’s why Tom Wolfe came up with the me decade. Though I thought the 80s were more the me decade. People seemed a lot more self-interested in the 80s.

Wolfe took a military term for anti-aircraft fire and made it into a metaphor for criticism or bad publicity, leading to a term for someone whose job it was to field such criticism in much the same way Austin Hedges, Travis Darnot, Gary Sanchez, or Kurt Suzuki would for their baseball teams.

Flak?

F-L-A-K.

Right, F-L-A-K, flak.

And what is a person who takes care of such flak for people?

They’re a flak catcher.

Flak catchers.

A PR person.

Yes, exactly.

He called them flak catchers, right.

Speaking of that sport, Wolf used a term for someone who exhibits tough or ruthless behavior reminiscent of someone who does not play a game with a soft projectile.

Hardball?

Hardballer.

You call them a hardballer, yes, yeah.

Wolf introduced a word meaning a high level of celebrity.

It’s a takeoff on an earth sciences word for the layer about 30 miles above the surface of the earth.

Stratosphere?

Atmospheres.

Right, but what do people who are celebrities, what are they more concerned with than stratus?

Stratosphere?

The statusphere, yes.

I think you’ll know this one.

This term means to approach or even extend the limits of what is possible.

It was a term used by pilots and astronauts, and the office supply mentioned in it means the combinations of speed and altitude, range and speed, or speed and stress that can constitute the limits of a plane’s capabilities.

Pushing the envelope.

Pushing the envelope, yes.

Wolf took a three-word phrase, famous as something a New Yorker might say, and squeezed it into a one-word interjection in Bonfire of the Vanities.

You can even see it on a sign welcoming you to Brooklyn.

Forget about it.

Yeah, forget about it. You’re in Brooklyn.

That’s all I have for today about Tom Wolfe.

Rest in peace, Mr. Wolfe.

We love all these phrases you gave us. Thank you so much.

Thanks, John. We’ll talk to you next week.

All right. Talk to you then.

More about language coming up with your calls, 877-929-9673.