20 years ago, Morley Safer interviewed the legendary journalist and author, who died this week
Tom Wolfe, the « new journalist » and famed author whose novels include « The Right Stuff » and « Bonfire of the Vanities, » died Monday in a Manhattan hospital. He was 88.
« It’s quite humbling to know that, despite all your aspirations, all of your dreams and all the talents you think you have, you’re made of clay, » Wolfe once mused in a conversation with Morley Safer on 60 Minutes.
Two years before that interview, Wolfe had suffered a massive heart attack and undergone a quintuple bypass, which both saved his life and changed it. Wolfe told Safer that afterward, he enjoyed every moment « a little more. »
« As the Stoic Epictetus used to say, ‘You’re nothing but a piece of crockery and a quart of blood,' » he told Safer. « And it gives a whole other meaning to the word ‘soul.’ I think your soul is your relationships with other people. And that’s the part of you that really doesn’t die. »
Safer’s 1988 conversation with Wolfe — about life, work, and societal shifts as the last millennium drew to a close — can be watched in the video player above.
