Regardless of talent, most writers do not justify a documentary; the profession simply isn’t visual enough. At certain points during “Radical Wolfe,” the new Netflix film tracing the career of the journalist and novelist, everyone pauses to say that Tom Wolfe spent much of his adult life playing a character named “Tom Wolfe.” He of the exclamation points and Southern manners, the white suits and pageboy flop. As dangerous as this character work seems to be for writers—in the case of Hunter S. Thompson, it probably killed him—it is ultimately of little consequence. All that really matters is what is on the page. When future readers wish to visit America in the years between Kennedy and Reagan, they will read Tom Wolfe, and will be lucky to do so. God bless him and keep his clothes immaculate, on whatever celestial boulevards he may gambol today. But Wolfe’s excellence in reporting and stylistic gifts cover a fairly grievous flaw: He mistook the stick up his ass for a divining rod.
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