Wolfe: Fact or Fiction?

Tom Wolfe knows all about reporting, and all about writing fiction. He's done both quite successfully in his career. And he's even been able to marry the two by producing the novel as social commentary as well as non-fiction as creative narrative.

That's why Wolfe suggests young fiction writers try to get a bite of news reporting first.

"News is stranger than imagination and it triggers ideas," he says. "Find detail to help your imagination."

As an example, Wolfe mentions socialite Paris Hilton. "The unaided imagination of a novelist needs to know what he's going to read in tomorrow's newspaper. Who would've thought Paris Hilton's scandalous video would be the very thing to launch her career?"

He strongly encourages writers to do their homework before writing. "Blend in and live with people you want to write about. Learn about them before you write about them. Write about something real, something that relates to the world around you. Many great American novelists began as reporters."

No doubt, he includes himself in that lot.

To see more of Paris Hilton, go to … on second thought, that's not the best idea.

See what Tom Wolfe had to say about the state of the novel, the Internet, and Paris Hilton in his interview with The American Spectator.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7601