TOM WOLFE

Richard A. Kallan

His newspaper goes on strike, and so he decides to write an article on customized cars for Esquire magazine. He travels to California, gathers his facts, but then, as he says, just "couldn't pull the thing together." The managing editor, Byron Dobell, tells him to hand in his notes and another writer will be found. He stays up all night typing a personal, letterlike, forty-nine-page memorandum that so impresses Dobell that he decides to delete the "Dear Byron" and publish it virtually in its entirety: "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby." 1

Thus began Tom Wolfe's embrace of literary journalism, or what he would later refer to as New Journalism. The now famous "Kandy" memorandum enabled Wolfe to recognize that feature journalism--in particular, magazine writing--could achieve added depth and realism by fusing the stylistic features of fiction and the reportorial obligations of journalism to form a "novelistic-sounding"--but still factually constrained--literature. This discovery would impel a receptive Wolfe to further cross traditional journalistic boundaries once the strike was settled at the New York Herald Tribune and he returned to work as a feature writer.

Part of Wolfe's motivation was to garner a readership he was otherwise unsure of securing. The problem, Wolfe wrote in The New Journalism, was simply that "most non-fiction writers, without knowing it, wrote in a century-old British tradition in which it was understood that the narrator shall assume a calm, cultivated and, in fact, genteel voice" (1973, 17). Its merits notwithstanding, the style was somewhat bland. "When they [readers] came upon that pale beige tone, it began to signal them, unconsciously, that a known bore was here again, 'the journalist,' a pedestrian mind, a phlegmatic spirit, a faded personality, and there was no way to get rid of the pallid little troll, short of ceasing to read" (17). Wolfe soon rejected the traditional prescription that reportorial tone and perspective remain impersonal, and that any overt sense of the writer's presence be distilled.

Beyond capturing readers' interest, Wolfe sought to become something more than just a "reporter." The dream of every journalist, he said, was to become a novelist, the pinnacle of literary achievement and status.

The idea was to get a job on a newspaper, keep body and soul together, pay the rent, get to know "the world," accumulate' experience,,' perhaps work some of the fat off your style--then, at some point, quit cold, say goodbye to journalism, move into a shack somewhere, work night and day for six months, and light up the sky with the final triumph. The final triumph was known as The Novel. (1973, 5)

Wolfe, however, came to realize that in the meantime he could work within the medium and produce a reporting with insight and execution resembling fine literature. Before chancing the ultimate and going "into the shack," he might safely experiment.

Not even the journalists who pioneered in this direction doubted for a moment that the novelist was the reigning literary artist, now and forever. All they were asking for was the privilege of dressing up like him . . . until the day when they themselves would work up their nerve and go into the shack and try for real. (1973, 9; Wolfe's ellipsis)

By trying to write "literature" as opposed to "mere journalism," Wolfe, too, might experience the excitement and satisfaction of the higher, nobler calling.

Finally, whereas the mission of conventional journalism was primarily to inform and allow for informed judgment by dispensing a specific range of facts, Wolfe was more interested in establishing the "larger," interpretive truth. 2 Traditional journalism's limited conception of the "facts," he believed, often effected an inaccurate, incomplete story that precluded readers from exercising informed judgment. In contrast, Wolfe (at his best) exercised what Dan Wakefield has called "imaginative" reporting--imaginative

not because the author has distorted the facts, but because he has presented them in a full instead of a naked manner, brought out the sights, sounds and feel surrounding those facts, and connected them by comparison with other facts of history, society, and literature in an artistic manner that does nor diminish bur gives greit depth and dimension to the facts. (Wakefield 1966, 87) 3

In the years following the "Kandy" memorandum, Wolfe produced a colorful array of penetrating, stylistic reporting. In 1965, several of h'' articles for New York and other publications were reprinted in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a full-length nonfiction work about Ken Kesey and the acid-taking world, was published in 1968; also appearing in the same year was The Pump House Gang, another collection of contemporary culture articles, most of which Wolfe had written for New York magazine, 1964 through 1966. Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970) is comprised of two articles: "Radical Chic," a description of composer Leonard Bernstein's fund-raising party for imprisoned members of the Black Panther party which appeared earlier in New York; and "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers," the recounting of interactions between militant blacks and the San Francisco Office of Economic Opportunity.

These four books exemplified what became known as The New Journalism, a school of reporting with which Wolfe became so closely linked that his writing often was viewed as symbolic of the entire class; one seemingly could not critique Wolfe without turning attention to New Journalism, and vice versa. Not surprisingly, Wolfe emerged in the early 1970s as New Journalism's major spokesperson and theorist. His forum included the Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, New York, and Esquire; subsequently, most of these essays were revised to become the introductory chapters of The New Journalism.

Many, of course, questioned whether New Journalism was all that "new." The four literary devices Wolfe said were particularly prominent in New Journalism writing--reconstructing a scene-by-scene account of the story as opposed to forging a conclusionary narrative; the use of extensive dialogue; providing the reader with multiple points of view, not just the author's; and the detailed describing of those verbal and nonverbal symbols depictive of a character's lifestyle (1973, 31-33)--had been used, albeit sporadically, by other journalists prior to Wolfe. Indeed, stylistic reporting has a long history that some say dates back centuries (e.g., Murphy 1974, 29; Berner 1986, 6). Still, New Journalism was more than style. It was also a method of data collection whereby subjects were researched less by the traditional direct interview than by "shadowing" and unobtrusively observing the verbal and nonverbal behaviors of the involved principals over an extended period. Through "saturation reporting," Wolfe maintained, one could more effectively determine genuine character (1970a, 22).

It seemed all-important to be there when dramatic scenes took place, to get the dialogue, the gestures, the facial expressions, the details of the environment. The idea was to give the full objective description, plus something that readers always had to go to novels and short stories for namely, the subjective and emotional life of the characters. (1973, 21)

Stories were reconstructed from the subject's and the writer's memories and interpretations of experiences. As such, saturation reporting was not quite what has been called "depth" reporting. The latter generally implies an increased quantity of sources consulted and reportorial time spent; the former entails a more complex set of relationships wherein the journalist becomes an involved, more fully reactive witness, no longer distanced and detached from the people and events reported. What emerged was one's distinct and revealing thought processes. The journalist was unmasked.

It was this imposition of personal sense-making that inspirited Wolfe's much noted stylistic flair. To be sure, a shy, inhibited narrator would not have championed exclamation points, italics, and ellipses; invented punctuation and sometimes used none at all; creatively experimented with typography and type fonts; written long, fact-stuffed sentences that celebrated the adjective and the adverb; and relished colloquial metaphor, contemporary slang, and the oral style in general. 4 Wolfe's tone was as bold as it was casual: his writings "read like personal letters--open, unassuming, intimate" (Kallan 1975, 109). One learned almost as much about Wolfe as about the subject described.

Most important, Wolfe's imposition of personal sense-making encouraged the artistic management of fact, the function of which is to render the author trustworthy and the analysis convincing. This becomes especially important in those areas in which readers lack knowledge and given that journalism operates from a standard of proof not requiring rigorous, logical demonstration. 5 Moreover, Wolfe's experientially based writings usually did not allow for external verification inasmuch as what was written was culled from a uniquely personal exposure to the individuals depicted, many of whom had neither the interest nor the means to provide corrective response. 6 To appreciate how Wolfe established the "logic" for message acceptance, one must consider Wolfe's portrayal of self and the means by which plausibility was fostered.

Wolfe, for instance, intimates his competence and trustworthiness through the frequent use of historical analogy, which, beyond illuminating the subject and strengthening the analysis presented (because it appears congruent with precedent), allows Wolfe to demonstrate knowledge of history, literature, science, and so forth in the nonsuspect process of appearing to present a logical argument.

[Record producer] Phil Spector is the bona-fide Genius of Teen. Every baroque period has a flowering genius who rises up as the most glorious expression of its style of life--in latter-day Rome, the Emperor Commodus; in Renaissance Italy, Benvenuto Cellini in late Augustan England, the Earl of Chesterfield; in the sal volatile Victorian age, Dante Gabriel Rossetti; in late-fancy neo-Greek Federal America, Thomas Jefferson; and in Teen America Phil Spector is the bona-fide Genius of Teen. ( 1965a, 6)

The analogy does not really prove Spector's brilliance in the sense of showing that he possesses significant qualities in common with other geniuses. Rather, it reminds the reader of past geniuses, implying the plausibility that Spector could be the same. Perhaps the analogy's intent is only to show that every period has given rise to the genius spirit, but who would disagree that the analogy functions to embellish Wolfe's credibility by portraying him as someone more than just familiar with history, and that from this intimation of intellectual competence the reader's confidence in Wolfe begins to grow? 7 The very act of competent analogizing may convey the Image of an omniscient speaker who grasps concepts so facilely that they can be structured and ordered in terms of yet other ideas.

Sometimes Wolfe uses historical analogy to enhance the importance of his writing by elevating his subject's credibility and significance. In his portrait of Las Vegas and Bugsy Siegel (1965a, 3-28), for example, he maintains that Siegel, who raised the Flamingo Hotel in the middle of a desert, may have represented the first post-World War II nonaristocrat to build a monument honoring himself. His lavish hotel set precedent for the construction of similar gambling skyscrapers; the Flamingo became the architectural style for all Las Vegas. Further, Wolfe contends that Siegel influenced the whole of America's architecture. "Las Vegas' neon sculpture, its fantastic fifteen-story-high display signs, parabolas, boomerangs, rhomboids, trapezoids and all the rest of it, are already the staple design of the American landscape outside of the oldest parts of the oldest cities" (1965a, xvi). Then, in a casually dropped, matter- of-fact comparison, Wolfe observes that "Siegel's aesthetic, psychological and cultural insights, like Cezanne's, Freud's, and Max Weber's, could not die" ( 11). That such a comparison is even attempted may suggest that it has some validity inasmuch as Wolfe simply could have said, "Siegel's aesthetic, psychological, and cultural insights would not die." Nor does Wolfe amplify what surely would be a difficult analogy to develop factually. Regardless, Siegel's image is enhanced by what Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca refer to as the mutual interaction and transference of credibility resulting from such a comparison. 8 Side by side, the credibility of Cezanne, Freud, and Weber interacts with gangster Siegel's, reforming the audience's views toward each. The images of Cezanne, Freud and Weber may tarnish when placed in league with Siegel, but the lesser appreciated Siegel enjoys an ascendance in stature because of the comparison, and it is his credibility, not his counterparts', that most concerns Wolfe as a polemicist for Siegel.

Wolfe's suggestion that Siegel is great/significant only flirts with the idea, hinting but never developing similarities between Siegel and his supposed counterparts. As does the Spector analogy, the Siegel analogy serves to remind--in this case, to recall that some ideas do not die. Yet the implication, in light of Wolfe's reference to Cezanne, Freud, and Weber, is that great ideas do not die, and therefore Siegel was great because his did not. Too, there is the assumption that Siegel had aesthetic, psychological, and cultural insights--as opposed to simply having certain tastes. Yet, the analogy is seductive, perhaps because, like most of Wolfe's analyses, it is packaged without qualification. It is not "I think," "It would appear," "One might conclude." Nor do qualifiers such as "sometimes," "usually," or "perhaps" preface any of Wolfe's statements. The style connotes assuredness and promotes the sensation that everything described is obvious and absolute.

Wolfe's poised, confident tone is enhanced further by his use of hyperbole and its implication that the analysis is hilariously patent. A good illustration is Wolfe's two-part series, "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of the Walking Dead!" and "Lost in the Whicky Thicket: The New Yorker--11." Although written "as a lark, as a break in what to me were the serious articles I was doing," the series attests to Wolfe's skillful management of hyperbole. Authored in 1965, it 'commemorated" the New Yorker's fortieth anniversary by contending that the magazine had become dull, predictable, and second-rate. In describing New Yorker editor William Shawn, Wolfe writes:

Shawn is a very quiet man. He has a soft, somewhat high voice. He seems to whisper all the time. The whole. . . zone around his office, a kind of horsehair-stuffing atmosphere of old carpeting, framed New Yorker covers, quiet cubicles and happy-shabby, baked-apple gentility, is a Whisper Zone. One gets within 40 feet of it and everybody... is whispering, all the secretaries and everybody. The Shawn-whisper, the whisper zone radiates out from Shawn himself. Shawn in the hallway slips along as soundlessly as humanly possible and--chooooo--he meets somebody right there in the hall. The nodding! The whispering! Shawn is 57 years old but still has a boyish face, a small, a plump man, round in the cheeks. He always seems to have on about 20 layers of clothes, about three button-up sweaters, four vests, a couple of shirts, two ties, it looks that way, a dark shapeless suit over the whole ensemble, and white cotton socks. (1965b, 9; Wolfe's ellipses)

Such dazzling and arresting hyperbole serves not only to enhance Wolfe's air of confidence but to insulate his analysis if readers become so engrossed with the minor details hyperbolically portrayed that attentions are consumed by materials thematically inconsequential; the reader may be distracted from assessing the writer's broader viewpoint.

The convincingness of Wolfe's analysis also stems in part from selective detailing. In one of his personally favorite works (cited in Overend 1979, 14), "Radical Chic," Wolfe offers nostalgie de la boue (social slumming) as the motive for celebrities and socialites who attend Leonard and Felicia Bernstein's fund-raising gathering for imprisoned members of the Black Panther party (Overend, 14). But surely some of the Bernsteins' guests could be sincere? And are not others motivated by both sincerity and nostalgie de la boue? And could there be those who attend because of curiosity and nothing more? Wolfe does not say that nostalgie de la boue is probably a motive of many, for it would weaken the strength and simplicity of his argument. Instead, he sets forth a categorical explanation the structural integrity of which mandates omission. To show that the Bernstein gathering represents a status exercise by white liberals wishing desperately to be fashionable, Wolfe must sculpture some of his evidence, beginning with the party list.

There seems to be a thousand stars above and a thousand stars below, a room full of stars, a penthouse duplex full of stars, a Manhattan tower full of stars, with marvelous people drifting through the heavens, Jason Robards, John and D. D. Ryan, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Schuyler Chapin, Goddard Lieberson, Mike Nichols, Lillian Hellman, Larry Rivers, Aaron Copland, Richard Avedon, Milton and Amy Green, Lukas Foss, Jennie Tourel, Samuel Barber, Jerome Robbins, Steve Sondheim Adolf and Phyllis Green, Betty Comden, and the Patrick O'Neals.... There's Otto Preminger in the library and Jean vanden Heuvel in the hall, and Peter and Cheray Duchin in the living room, and Frank and Donna Stanton, Gail Lumet, Sheldon Harnick, Cynthia Phipps, Burton Lane, Mrs. August Heckscher, Roger Wilkins Barbara Walters, Bob Silvers, Mrs. Richard Avedon, Mrs. Arthur Penn, Julie Belafonte, Harold Taylor, and scores more. (1970b, 6-7)

Wolfe admits that there are "others" in attendance, but they are not singled out. One Wolfe reviewer claims, "Personal friends of his [Wolfe's] who were at Bernsteins (like Gloria Steinem) go largely unscored, while old enemies are dragged incongruously from the wings to be nostalgic de la boue-ed" ("Tom Wolfe: Reactionary Chic" 1972, 61). The omission of Steinem could be seen as the protection of a friend inasmuch as the guests described do not fare well when scrutinized individually or when viewed collectively as symbolizing an ideology; but it is also evident that Steinem does not quite fit Wolfe's thesis of shallow, guilt-ridden, masochistic--but always chic-- men and women being intimidated by knowing blacks. Whatever Wolfe's motivation, it is not to his rhetorical advantage to note Steinem's presence.

For their white audience, Wolfe argues, the Black Panthers symbolize romantic heroes: oppressed, alienated, militant, violent, they seem glamorously notorious. What with "shoot-outs, revolutions, pictures in Life magazine of policemen grabbing Black Panthers like they were Vietcong-- somehow it all runs together in the head with the whole thing of how beautiful they are" (1970b, 8). According to Wolfe, it is radically chic-- the ultimate status achievement--to know a Black Panther or two. They remain so poised, so stylish, so black.

These are no civil rights Negroes wearing gray suits three sizes too big--
--no more interminable Urban League banquets in hotel ballrooms where they try to alternate the blacks and whites around the tables as if they were stringing Arapaho Beads--
--these are real men! (1970b, 8)

The impression that the Panthers are the only blacks in the room and the only kind of blacks acceptable to the audience gathered is further insured by Wolfe's not mentioning the presence of somewhat less militant blacks-- for example, Ray Innis, Floyd McKissick, Preston Wilcox, and Roy Wilkins (Kuehl 1971, 214).

As the preceding examples demonstrate, Wolfe developed and enhanced the credibility of his arguments through an array of strategies and devices, most of which usually were not associated with conventional feature writing. The result was a personalistic reporting that reflected the viewpoint of its author more rhetorically than the older form. Indeed, Wolfe's earlier works transformed what for years had been a structurally rigid magazine formula into a bold, investigative literature having persuasive purpose and design.

Wolfe's journalism was new--a subset of the larger, established category of literary journalism--to the extent that he engaged his subject "experientially," and the posture was hitherto uncommon. Because his sense-making of the story was so integral to its presentation, Wolfe moved to the foreground of the reader's consciousness. Was this the appropriate neighborhood for the journalist? Whatever the answer, the debate following the appearance of New Journalism at least prompted many reporters to reconsider the functional and ethical dimensions of their work. An increasingly self-conscious journalist surfaced, one demonstrating greater interest in the processes and meanings inhering within any written communication.

Wolfe's later, post-1970 writings reflect both a tempering of his vintage stylistic tone and an even wider range of literary talent. He considered other forms as he occasionally had done in the past, 9 and in 1975 he wrote The Painted Word, which, while containing some stylistic traces of New Journalism, was basically a conventional literary essay, an "armchair" indictment of modern art. After a third anthology, Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine (1976), Wolfe focused his attentions on the American space program and in 1979 wrote what has become his best known and perhaps most enlightening piece of New Journalism, The Right Stuff.

His most commercially successful nonfiction work (eclipsed only by his first novel), which was later made into a popular film of the same title, The Right Stuff embraces a narrative structure wherein scene-by-scene construction and character dialogue are more limited, unlike Wolfe's other New Journalism efforts. On the other hand, the detailing of status-life symbols and the presentation of multiple points of view appear prominently and arc used effectively to endorse Wolfe's contentions. Too, while Wolfe exhibits less of his customary stylistic flair, the bold strokes that do surface seem more integral to the text, more elucidating of the point--rather than a5 simple attention- securing devices.

But what remains most remarkable about The Right Stuff is what the author discovers and the reader learns. The book elevated Wolfe's literary status and name recognition as well as New Journalism's credibility because it so exquisitely met the latter's charge of extrapolating the "larger truth." The Right Stuff abounds with keen insights about the logic behind the choice and training of the first astronauts; their mentality, drive, and lifestyle, and their public perception and symbolic national importance. All are scrupulously analyzed from a data base infused with the methodological essence of New Journalism: exhaustive and meticulous reporting. Indeed, when the book does falter it is on the side of excessive and repetitious description, a problem not uncommon to other Wolfe works, especially The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. By his own admission, Wolfe remains a "maximalist," some- one dedicated to putting in everything--"that's what I am, a putter-inner" (quoted in "Master of His Universe' 1989, 92).

The Right Stuff, Wolfe's last full-length New Journalism effort to date was followed in 1980 by In Our Time, a collection of previous drawings with commentary. A year later, Wolfe penned a stinging critique of con- temporary American architecture, From Bauhaus to Our House. In 1987, years after having announced the literary supremacy of New Journalism in light of contemporary fiction's then abandonment of social realism, Wolfe authored his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, an irony somewhat muted inasmuch as saturation reporting underscored the work.

Today, Tom Wolfe says of himself: "I'm a journalist at heart; even as a novelist, I'm first of all a journalist. I think all novels should be journalism to start, and if you can ascend from that plateau to some marvelous altitude terrific. I really don't think it's possible to understand the individual without understanding the society" (quoted in "Master of His Universe" 1989, 92). Wolfe has done just that: his portraits of contemporary society detail a rich compendium of modern wants and desires. Whatever he is called--whatever genre of writing he chooses to practice--the result is likely to be another installment in an already illuminating social-psychological diary of American culture.

NOTES

1. The article first appeared in Esquire in November 1963 and was later reprinted in Wolfe's anthology. Wolfe's account of the "Kandy" memorandum appears in the book's introduction (xiii-xiv) and is confirmed by Hayes (1972, 12).

2. In Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann observed that news and truth were not the same: "The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bringing to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act" (1965, 226). While Lippmann, however, believed that journalists should focus on delivering accurate news, Wolfe's major concern was portraying the "truth."

3. Put more precisely: "Whereas routing journalism focuses on the object of perception, 'the fact,' New Journalism describes the 'world view' which constitutes the facts. The reports focus not only on the signs and symbols which reveal reality but also on the communication codes which organize those signs and symbols" ( son 1982, 146).

4. For a specific analysis of these features, see Kallan 1979.

5. Whereas at one extreme academic scholars must meet meticulous evidential criteria, the journalist is precluded from anything resembling a systematic presentation and referencing of supporting data by time and space limitations; professional conventions growing out of the need to simplify material for a large, diverse spectrum of readers; and the frequent practice of source confidentiality.

6. Macdonald notes that "the little people," because of their status, have no real power to object "if they think they have been misrepresented," while celebrities welcome any publicity, accurate or not (1965, 5).

7. The sheer volume of facts underscoring Wolfe's analogies easily can lead one to conclude, as did Vonnegut, that Wolfe "knows everything" (1965, 4).

8. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca hold that in any analogy there is an interaction of terms, resulting in '`transfers of value from phoros ('the terms that serve to buttress the argument') to theme ('the terms to which the conclusion relates') and vice versa ,' Phoros and theme interact, and the resulting mutual transference of meaning produces two mutated but similarly perceived terms; phoros and theme become one (1969, 381, 373).

9. Wolfe previously had taken time out while writing New Journalism to work on satirical editorials (e.g., "The Courts Must Curb Culture"); opinion pieces (e.g., "Pause, Now, and Consider Some Tentative Conclusions About the Meaning of This Mass Perversion Called Porno- Violence"); book reviews (e.g., "Son of Crime and Punishment"); and short stories (e.g., "The Commercial," in Mauve Gloves).

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-----. 1965b, Apr. 18. "Lost in the Whicky Thicket: The New Yorker--11." New York: 16+.

-----. 1965c, Mar. 14. "Son of Crime and Punishment or: How to Go Eight Fast Rounds with the Heavyweight Champ--and Lose." Review of An American Dream, by Norman Mailer. New York Herald Tribune Book Review: 1+.

----- . 1965d, Apr. 11. "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of the Walking Dead!" New York: 7 +.

-----. 1966, Dec. 3. "The Courts Must Curb Culture." Saturday Evening Post: 10-12.

-----. 1967, July. "Pause, Now, and Consider Some Tentative Conclusions About the Meaning of This Mass Perversion Called Porno-Violence: What It Is and Where It Came from and Who Put the Hair on the Walls." Esquire: 59 +.

-----. 1968a. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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-----. 1970b. Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

-----. 1973. The New Journalism. With an anthology edited by Tom Wolfe E. W. Johnson. New York: Harper and Row.

-----. 1975. The Painted Word. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

-----. 1976. Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.

-----. 1979. The Right Stuff. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

-----. 1980. In Our Time. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

-----. 1981. From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

-----. 1987. The Bonfire of the Vanities. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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