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He speaks very softly, a hint of his native Richmond, Va., still audible in his vowels. "I also spent some time, although not much time, in a zero-degree freezer unit like the one Conrad works in in the novel." Did he actually witness firsthand a "workout" session such as the one Charlie endures at PlannersBanc? "No," he says in the tone of a reporter stymied. "I tried everything, promised to dress like a banker and keep quiet, but I never could get into one. Still, I have five sources for that scene, and I know I'm right."
Being right--accurate--has been important to Wolfe since his earliest days as a New Journalist, when he wrote feature stories so vividly, employing such a wide array of techniques borrowed from fiction that some readers didn't believe they could be true. Jann Wenner, founder, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, opened his magazine's pages to early versions of The Right Stuff, Bonfire and A Man in Full, and is a Wolfe friend and fan. "Many years ago, he used to get knocked for making stuff up," Wenner says. "But in my experience with him, which is 25 years, he's never made anything up, any detail of fact." Wenner believes Wolfe's strenuous pursuit of precise details, both in his journalism and fiction, has produced a major body of work. "If you read it all together as one piece, you would understand the amazing modern crazy quilt and fabric of contemporary America better than [through] any other thing I can imagine seeing or reading or looking at."
But the power of A Man in Full stems not simply from its reportorial accuracy; there is also the extraordinary sympathy Wolfe generates for his characters, particularly Charlie, Conrad and the abandoned Martha. Sympathy was a quality in short supply in much of Wolfe's early journalism, in which he allowed his subjects to embarrass or hang themselves through their meticulously quoted words. Witness Radical Chic, Wolfe's witheringly objective account of a 1970 fund-raising party for the Black Panthers held in the exquisite Manhattan apartment of the composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia, during which the journalist detailed both the revolutionary rhetoric and the passing of hors d'oeuvres. Something of the same take-no-prisoners ethos ruled Bonfire. So what has changed during the past 11 years? Has Wolfe mellowed?
"Well," he says, "I've suffered." Then he laughs. "I prefer to say I've broadened." He talks about his heart attack in August 1996 and of being wheeled into an operating room for quintuple bypass surgery. "I was thinking of A Man in Full on the way in, maybe as a way of focusing on a lesser worry or because of the effects of the Demerol they'd given me." The operation was successful, and Wolfe emerged "euphoric. I was so happy to be alive that I started writing constantly, although mostly on things not related to the novel."