I’ve been rereading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for a week now–I need to revisit it for the majorly druggy section of my bildungsRosman–and it’s so intense and so intensely racistsexisthomophobic that I have to put it down periodically and read something cooling and smart like this 90s interview with Toni Morrison. The biggest conclusion I have drawn (and it’s a fucking embarrassing one) is that next to Edmund White and Eve Babitz Tom Wolfe most influenced my writing style and methodology. I forgot how many times as a teen I read this book and all of his other books to boot. I even called myself the girl with the brown lipstick after a minor character in Bonfire. Oy, they say people don’t really change but the woman I am now can barely stand Wolfe’s status-quo-reinforcing jive. But his in-the-flow, in-the-glow, hyper-italicized, hyper-hyphenated, hyper-dimensional stream-of-consciousness self-possession? I guess it’s in my blood for good. Notice what you notice, he bellows in 24-point type, and I always have.