Tom Wolfe's next book is on immigration
03/12/2006
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Tom Wolfe's next book is on immigration: Joseph Rago interviews Wolfe in the WSJ:

"I've begun the research for a book on immigration," he notes. "When people ask me what I'm doing, I always tell them that, and the response is always the same. 'How interesting'—and then their heads fall over. 'God, how dull can it be.' . . . But immigration I swear is an exciting topic." Don't worry: Tom Wolfe, the man of the world, will be back. "Of course," his voice touched with autumn, "I have to find some economical way to do the research that won't take forever. Careers don't last forever, you know."

Inadvertently illustrating how sniffily uninterested the media are with immigration, we find this passage in Rago's interview with Wolfe:

"I also believe in the United States. I think this is the greatest nation that ever existed, still is. It's really the only really democratic country in the world. Find me one country, just one country in the entire world that would let a foreign people—different culture, different language, and in many cases different color than the majority of the native stock—take over politically an entire metropolitan area in less than one generation. I'm talking about the Cubans in Miami . . ."

Mr. Wolfe has a habit of using experience and anecdote to gird an argument or shade a meaning, and he carries on like this for some time.

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