The Best Stories (The Wolfe, Pt. 2)

It’s another special guest writer time! This is part two of a multipart series regarding the legendary writer Tom Wolfe. You can find my part one here. 

The best stories say something that is difficult to say about life.

That’s not to say the best stories are preachy. Preachy implies a sermonizing, moralizing aspect, a man standing at a pulpit imploring you, judging you, insisting you understand. I’ve always despised preachy stories, even when I agree with the message being preached!

A story with a moral exemplifies what the best of fiction is. Not pure escapism, not shouting a lesson, but a subtle, slow arrow toward an idea that is important. Maybe you like the idea, maybe you don’t, but the important thing is that the idea is given a full hearing in light of (fictional) evidence. The story cannot tell you its moral upfront. It has to unfold. And the moral is best when it is old because all of the best morals are old.

A Man in Full is Tom Wolfe’s second novel, published in 1998. It is centered on the story of Charlie Croker, an Atlanta real estate mogul who has finally gambled past his luck and is encountering financial difficulty. Three other characters are front and center as well: Conrad Hensley (a seemingly random warehouse worker in California), Raymond Peepgass (a drone at the bank that Croker is in debt to), and Roger White II (a corporate lawyer and personal friend of the mayor with a role to play in all of it.)

Croker is trying to keep his empire afloat while he is dead broke, Peepgass is trying to find a way to pay for his disastrous divorce and child support, Hensley is trying to work his way out of lifelong poverty, and White finds himself in the middle of a scandal he never expected to.

A Man in Full is a beautiful example of a long story with a moral. In fact, it not only has a moral, it has an ancient philosophy to show the modern reader. Wolfe takes his time in getting there. We are several hundred pages into an almost 800-page book before Stoicism is even mentioned, and we are almost at the end when we realize that we have read a love letter to this philosophy.

I believe A Man in Full is Tom Wolfe’s best fiction book because I believe it is the most optimistic and has the best message. Which is… Stoicism. If you don’t know what that is, Wikipedia can help you, and Marcus Aurelius can help you more. The real theme of A Man in Full is interpersonal pressure, and the ways people can react to it.

Charlie Croker, Raymond Peepgass, and Conrad Hensley all begin the book under enormous pressure, which steadily grows worse as the book proceeds. And at the end of the book, the answer becomes clear to two out of three of the men, with direct thanks to Stoicism. Pressure doesn’t need to matter to the moral fiber of an individual; it is only as relevant as your weakest instincts make it. Of course, realizing and acting upon this truth places you within a sub-one-percent minority of people who have ever lived, most of whom are considered insane by their peers. And so are a couple of characters, by the end of the book.

I don’t think Wolfe is at his peak as a prose-manufacturer with this book. I think he’s at his peak as a writer! A Man in Full lacks the emotional impact of I Am Charlotte Simmons and the razor-sharp hilarity of Bonfire of the Vanities, but it has something important to say to all readers, and it says it loudly and beautifully. The “ride” matters in a fictional work, but to make a truly great work of art, the destination matters even more.

Rest in Peace, Tom Wolfe.

Walk it Off (Me, Myself, and I – Pt. 3)

This is part three of three of my Disco Elysium analysis. You can find part one here and part two here.

‘In Elysium,’ [Kim] replies. ‘Behind our eyes. Like all human beings, detective.’ He looks around and sighs. ‘The world is what it is. I’m glad to see you’re stable. Keep it that way.’

Disco Elysium

Fantasy worlds usually come in two different forms: Tolkien-esque realms with magical elements or Asimov-like science fiction takes on the future. Such a binary approach does a huge disservice to what fantasy can really be. A talented writer does not have to choose between dragons and starships, let alone all of the tropes that come with them. Thankfully, Disco Elysium presents a fantasy world that in many ways appears to be our own, yet also has an array of fantastical features. Everything feels tucked away in its “logical” place.

Even more importantly, your detective protagonist gets to interact with those elements on a gameplay level. In most fantasy video games the player is able to run through a castle and perhaps read a book in the library about the structure, but any other interaction with the world around the player is limited. Disco Elysium lets you size up the proverbial castle, make a personal observation about it, and then run around until that observation is seared to your consciousness. This “Thought Cabinet” dictates who you are fundamentally.

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Incrementally, you begin to notice a change in the weather. When it snows, the flakes are softer when they stick to your worry-worn forehead. When it rains, the rain is warmer. Democracy is coming to the Administrative Region. The ideals of Dolorian humanism are reinstating themselves. How can they not? These are the ideals of the Coalition and the Moralist International. Those guys are signal blue. And they’re not only good — they’re also powerful. What will it be like, once their nuanced plans have been realized?

Thought Cabinet: “[The Moralist Humanism in the] Kingdom of Conscience”

What makes the Thought Cabinet so fascinating is the fact that it acknowledges how human beings go about the process of self-discovery. Naturally, self-discovery comes after a literal discovery: you interact with something strange or speak with a person that brings a distinctive viewpoint, forcing you to react and adapt. At this point, you have a “problem” in your head, but no real internalization has occurred yet. Disco Elysium bombards you with a variety of these so-called problems and invites you to clear space in your cabinet to internalize. Once you begin the process of internalization the fun starts!

Now your character’s stats take a hit with internalization. After all, haven’t you noticed that a thoughtful person in real life seems to be distracted when they are intellectually grappling with ideas? Likewise, no hasty conclusion is drawn. Instead, you are forced to walk in the game doing your regular business as you attempt to internalize the problem presented. Sooner or later euphoria grips you, presenting you with a solution! Your detective has worked through the problem and found an answer, its benefits changing your character. Now additional conversation options are open and you possess different skills.

The lone vector stretches in your mind’s eye into the wild pale yonder. For an unimaginable distance, forgetting, forgetting… Until you can no longer remember anything – no cities, no mountains, no oceans. A blank space with no point of reference, where only one type of motion is possible. The motion of a human throat, swallowing. And then it comes to you: to reach the end of the Motorway South is to be unborn. A lost piece of the man you were. A dark hope.

Thought Cabinet: “[The Pale Death of] Motorway South”

As previously mentioned, all of these thoughts blend directly into the worldbuilding. You can encounter a character who challenges your perspective, presenting you with a surprising thought you might not even agree with. Nevertheless, the thought is there and you can choose to ignore it or solve it. Even more interesting is the fact that many of your personal skills can lead you to thoughts. Increasing your physical prowess can give you a surge to your character’s masculinity, allowing him to adopt a more authoritarian ideology. In contrast, apologizing profusely to people can make you into the “sorry” cop.

Perhaps at this point you are wondering why all of these thoughts and concepts belong in a detective mystery videogame. The simple answer is that many of them are directly tied into the central narratives of the story, while many more serve to flesh out your detective and develop threads for future sequels. Never once do you encounter the fantastical “pale” that both separates and binds the entire world together, but it is the central foundation for Elysium and its inhabitants. In that same vein, learning the difference between the Moralist and the Communist Internationals is critical to knowing why a man was murdered!

Disco Elysium is certainly a game greater than the sum of its parts. Other video games might do mystery better or perhaps feature more alluring individual mechanics, but very few of them come close to the heights this game soars to. Once you conclude the mystery and find the killer things abruptly shift into high gear, establishing this game as a mere prologue for a greater story. The mystery has been resolved, but there are more on the horizon. What will the storytellers choose to tell next in the world of Elysium? Only time will tell!

Die to Self (Me, Myself, and I – Pt. 2)

This is part two of three of my Disco Elysium analysis. You can find part one here.

‘Or maybe it’s the entire world that’s cursed? It’s such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted. That’s why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there’s something inherently violent even about dice rolls. It’s like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternate ending, or an entirely different world…’

Disco Elysium

Most role-playing games start out with a character creation screen. The player can navigate a series of menus and choose all manner of attributes for their avatars: gender, race (fantastical or not), abilities, and potentially a background. To be perfectly honest, once you’ve played a handful of RPGs you start to get the message–all of this stuff is as much cosmetic as impactful. Sure, maybe you can be a female elf with an interesting background and use a nasty crossbow, but chances are you will say and do the exact same things as some random human player who likes to swing a sword at everyone.

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Disco Elysium takes an entirely different approach to the character creation screen. Because of its heavy narrative and worldbuilding, the game does not allow you to create anyone you want. Instead, you have a very well defined character who has completely forgotten everything about himself. Sounds boring and linear? That’s where things get complicated. You see, the player has the ability to construct their detective on an elemental level that goes far beyond pointy ears and bows. They can create a truly personalized experience!

There are four major character attributes (intellect, psyche, physique, and motorics) each broken down into six particular skills. Mathematically speaking, this means that every player has 24 attributes that they can choose to enhance or to neglect. Essentially, the player builds their detective like a tabletop role player would build a character in a Dungeons & Dragons game. While I certainly don’t have the time to explain every skill, the following skills are excellent examples that are representative of their fundamental attributes:

• Intellect Skill Visual Calculus: “Visual Calculus verses you not only in the laws of the state, but the laws of nature. It enables you to create virtual crime-scene models in your mind’s eye. You’ll see how a bullet shattered the glass and from that trace its trajectory with mathematical precision. “
• Psyche Skill Suggestion: “Suggestion urges a soft-power approach. If people think they want what you want, you’ve already won. This skill enables you to implant ideas into the minds of others. You can make the citizens like you more. You can make gangsters turn on each other, too.”
• Physique Skill Shivers: “Shivers come when the temperature drops and you become more keenly aware of your surroundings. It enables you to hear the city itself, to truly belong to the streets. It is a supra-natural ability; old wrongs play out in present time, scenes across the city happens in front of you. But who is speaking to you?”
• Motorics Skill Composure: “Composure wants you to not crack: or, at least, it wants you to not crack in front of other people. It enables you to put up a strong front. It keeps your emotions hidden from the world and helps you to read the body language of others – to sense the cracks in their own composure.”

What makes this character creation so diabolically compelling is the simple fact that no player can master all of these attributes and skills in a single playthrough. In other words, they can’t turn into a Superman role player like in many video games. Health attributes are also split between skills, including the ability to avoid damage. Do you want to be a brute capable of taking extreme physical pain and possessing excellent technical skills? You can do that, but you certainly won’t possess a strong intellect or a stable psyche. What a dilemma!

So how do these skills work? Every one of these 24 skills impacts your detective’s literal worldview. Passively speaking, your “Visual Calculus” skill casually executes mathematical operations, while your “Shivers” skill senses peculiar particulars around you. Actively speaking, Disco Elysium is based on a random double six-sided dice roll that is supplemented by your particular skill level. Every major verbal and physical decisive action in this game is dictated by a dice roll. Bashing down a door requires an active decision to roll the dice while persuading a woman to lower her weapon is a similar verbal dice roll.

All of these dice rolls can oftentimes be strung together in a single event. Throwing evidence at a whole group of suspects can allow your composure to scan their faltering façades, enabling your rhetoric skill to storm into the breach for maximum persuasion. There are limits to these abilities, however. Your skill of “Suggestion” might be completely fooled by a suspect with even greater powers, or an over-accumulation of the “Logic” skill can make your detective susceptible to vanity! These skills can save you or betray you.

To quickly summarize, all of these attributes and skills that define your detective radically transform a linear story into a multifaceted adventure with all manner of permutations. Depending on how things play out, some characters may live while others die and you might not even be able to completely figure out the case. Was it your fault for poor planning and investigation, or did Lady Luck fail you in the dice roll? Next time, we’ll cover the phenomenal worldbuilding and the mental concepts that develop within it!