Pensamiento - Literatura

VII. Contextualizing a Concern for Credibility

§61. Why is the writer so concerned with his credibility? Is it so readers believe his information and insights will help them work out for themselves some truth about events? Is it because he cares about this new genre, and he wants to gain credibility, by extension, for literary journalism? Is it to lead readers to admire those who he admires-who are, incidentally, those who society has traditionally admired-and, very importantly, offer a ground which shows the righteousness of that feeling?

§62. In his Foreword, Wolfe's mockery reveals his resent against people who started criticizing war. We should notice that in TRS his concern about correcting the public's view of heroism and courage is not based in excluding astronauts of being paid homage to their feats (as it seems ), but in including the military pilots, while acknowledging that they are the truest heroes of all-willing to pay the price of death in their defence of patriotic power. Does Wolfe actually think that those who traditionally have not needed any defence because they ruled through the use of violence need the support of artists and intellectuals ? Is he just a victim of vanity and therefore needs to state what is agreed by the majority, to voice the Public in order to get its applause? Is Wolfe mostly trying to upset people who, unwilling to die and refusing to kill and destroy, were fighting for the ideals of freedom and social justice? (Why so?) Or is heroism only found in those who are willing to kill and die in the name of geopolitical and economic power? "Only," because after reading Wolfe's words on single-combat hero, it is clear a circus trapeze artist risking death while working would not be felt as heroic by the by default mentality as military pilots are: a trapeze artist is earning a living, perhaps giving wings to a passion, and a military pilot is risking his life for the Fatherland, a kind of sacred concept in patriarchal societies. While describing patriotism in a light way, Wolfe is also justifying it as an inevitable feeling we, humans, have-whether we like it or not-when we realize the symbolic beauty or strength of our acclaimed heroes: "Huge waves of emotion rolled over you" (276). "There was something pure and rare about it. Patriotism" (277). "Pure" and "rare" strike me, in the best of the cases, as incredibly uninformed adjectives. (Perhaps a study of this episode and its language would illustrate Wolfe's frivolous ambiguity and his conservative stance, his subliminal playfulness.)

§63. Wolfe is concerned with redirecting in this sense the public's minds and hearts to the larger scene, certainly, but this larger scene is not criticism to the space program, the media or the demands of Cold War, but legitimizing the role of warriors (i.e. the war system). While pretending to be above any ideological interest ("universal" notions are non-ideological), Wolfe defends the traditional world order through polishing up the patriarchal notions of courage and heroism, notions easily understood by the majority because they have sustained the "logics" of warfare for centuries. And this he does at a time, the 20th century, when this order, these notions were being questioned by a meaningful percentage of the population for the first time. From World War I to the Vietnam war there had been a significant growing proportion of the population in capitalist democracies-from a capitalist perspective, tax payers-who started questioning the power system and its "inevitable" link to injustice, violence and destruction. (This became a crucial worry for power structures-actually, in 1980 the Reagan Administration would start off a "new" kind of war strategy, Low Intensity Warfare, aimed at perpetuating repression, oppression and exploitation in "the South" while preventing their own population from exerting critical thinking. Hollywood would soon join in, taking the cowboy hero to the conventional battlefield with military characters like Rambo.) But this greater proportion of the population concerned about human violence and unjust social structures was still a minority as compared to the public who would applaud an epic chanting of heroes in the 1970s. While posing as an independent creator, it is strange Wolfe should consider he was doing some dissenting when he was actually reinforcing the Status Quo Cause, working for the ruling elite, in order to "gain people's minds and hearts" and drive them away from "the rotten apples" (Low Intensity Warfare lingo). It is not surprising the narration became a bestseller. Presenting irrational violent men as heroes has always been popular. Formal innovation has never been popular, as the 19th and 20th century isms showed, among other creative movements. How many works of literary journalism have become bestsellers and which is their character, their aim?

 

Next: Conclusion

Please, quote the author and the site: michelle renyé, at mujerpalabra.net.
Another quotation style: michelle. "Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Some Comments on Formal Issues & the Timely Chanting of Military Heroism. An Essay on a Best-Seller". Mujer Palabra. 2005. Path: Pensamiento. Date of Access <https://www.mujerpalabra.net>.