(6 of 7)
A common response to heart surgery is depression. Wolfe's was delayed but finally hit in January 1997. "I'd never been depressed before," he says, "and I couldn't understand what was happening to me. I looked at the novel and thought it was a failure. I hadn't told enough about Charlie's early life, Conrad was dull and so forth. It seemed useless to go on with it." At this point, Wolfe's inborn personal reticence became an obstacle to his recovery. He once told an interviewer that he would not take his troubles to his best friend, and he has, in print, cast an unwaveringly gimlet eye on all the therapy manias of the age. "The Me Decade" was his much-quoted and derogatory sobriquet for the '70s.
But eventually Wolfe did unburden himself to a friend, Paul McHugh, the psychiatrist in chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md. "I called and told him roughly what was bothering me and asked him if he could recommend someone I could see in Manhattan. He said, 'The last I heard, trains are still running between there and Baltimore. Why not come see me?' I did, and we talked a lot over the phone, and by early April I was back to normal." But the memory of Wolfe's trying time is echoed in the new novel, when Charlie Croker, observing his at-risk Atlanta mansion and grounds bathed in sunlight, shrinks from the sight and thinks, "The depressed man longs for heavy clouds, fog, mist, chilly weather, downpours, hail."
In the lull between the completion of his novel, which he was still tinkering with in late summer, and all the publication hubbub to follow, Wolfe finds himself with the unaccustomed luxury of free time on his hands. He has filled some of it by accompanying his son Tommy, an accomplished squash player, to tournaments along the East Coast. "I used to play with him," Wolfe says of the son who is 55 years younger, "until I noticed him setting up shots for me. In aging athletes, the legs go first."
Wolfe was a baseball pitcher for his team at Washington and Lee University and says if he had been good enough to reach the major leagues, he would probably never have become a writer. But except for squash, he has been content to remain a spectator of sports ever since. "I never played golf or tennis, and the money I didn't waste on those pursuits I wasted on clothes." He says he owns "30 or 40 suits, I guess" and rewards himself for a good day's work by visiting his tailor to discuss new possibilities. "When I get forms to fill out that include the listing of my hobbies, I always write in 'window shopping.' I wish I could say hang gliding or bungee jumping, but window shopping is the truth."