We hovered around the gate to his compound, swarming around the Palestinian officials who drove by, poking our microphones through their dark, half-open windows.
But where were the people, I wondered, the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the frantic expressions of concern? Was this another story we Western journalists were getting wrong, bombarding the world with news of what we think is an historic event, while the locals get on with their lives? Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry In quieter moments since I have asked myself, why the sudden surge of emotion?
Because you're a moral imbecile? But, he tells Ed Vulliamy, he's bewildered by a sex-mad society and tired of being lectured to at dinner parties. So is he voting for Dubya tomorrow? He's not quite telling Ed Vulliamy, November 1, , The Guardian Wolfe's lambent success in documenting ambition, drunkenness, sloth and meanness in his own country has taken him from his native Virginia to New York which he wrote about in Bonfire of the Vanities, pitching the super-rich "Masters of the Universe" in high finance against the real world of the Bronx.
But even as the author of the quintessential New York novel, Wolfe feels estranged in the city, as he surveys America during the final days of the election campaign.
Estranged not from the subjects of his scrutiny, the "Masters of the Universe", but rather from the liberal elite.
