A Man in Full

by Tom Wolfe

He was one of those big men who are more intimidating in middle age than ever before, because their hide has gotten tougher and they’ve learned what it takes to be mean in a calculating way, which is the meanest way of all.

He knew that what he was about to do was foolhardy—and he knew he would do it anyway.

That was another Wes Jordan mannerism, repeating a phrase over and over, until it finally seemed totally ironic or else mysteriously significant.

Nobody—nobody—wins a citywide election strictly on the merits.

Your first wife married you for better or for worse. Your second wife, particularly if you were sixty and she was a twenty-eight-year-old number like Serena—why kid yourself?—she married you for better.

Like any man who has just committed a blunder of elementary stupidity, Charlie racked his brain to find the malefactor who had made him do it.

Every real leader knew that the occasional outburst of unexplained anger was good for discipline. It set the troops to searching their own conduct for flaws.

rare, indeed, is the male soul so staunch that it can withstand a woman’s tears.

“People can always tell there’s something a little too studied, a little too smart, whereas charisma consists of being like everybody else.”

Washington Irving, and do you know what he said? He said, ‘There are three ages of man: youth, middle age, and you-haven’t-changed-a-bit.’”

Another sunny day in May! He resented it. He resented God’s or Nature’s making it a sunny day. It reminded him too much of the optimism and energy of his youth, when he thought of life as a hill that led up to about age fifty-three or -four, a hill you climbed with gusto and boundless energy, somehow sure that what you would see at the crest would be the full glory of that dazzling Future you were always heading toward.

He realized that was paranoid of him, and he was not the paranoid type. But that was what betrayal did to you; it made you run untrue to form.

He couldn’t control the future, but he could control his own conduct—

depressed men do not become aroused.

“So tell me, do you consider yourself a Stoic?” “I’m just reading about it,” said Conrad, “but I wish there was somebody around today, somebody you could go to, the way students went to Epictetus. Today people think of Stoics—like, you know, like they’re people who grit their teeth and tolerate pain and suffering. But that’s not it at all. What they are is, they’re serene and confident in the face of anything you can throw at them. If you say to a Stoic, ‘Look, you do what I tell you or I’ll kill you,’ he’ll look you in the eye and say, ‘You do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do—and, by the way, when did I ever tell you I was immortal?’”

Wes said, “Do you know what politicians really love about politics—what makes politics so hard to give up once you’ve had a taste of it?” “Oh, I don’t know … Power? Fame? Money?” Wes laughed. “It’s certainly not money. Anybody who goes into politics to make money has to be an idiot. I know some idiots have done precisely that, but it’s a stupid thing to try. Me, I actually lose money every year, because on my salary I can’t do all the things I’m expected to do. And it’s not power, if by power you mean the power to get things done, change the life of the city, reduce crime, rehabilitate the South side, all those things. And it’s not fame. You quickly get used to publicity. You get used to seeing yourself on television, seeing your picture in the newspaper, even to having a special ‘In Depth’ segment done about you on the NBC nightly news or articles written about you in national magazines or The New York Times. You start to take all that as nothing more than a natural part of your life, your role. You start looking at it as something that’s just … there … like the sky, the sun, the clouds, the night, the moon, the stars, the traffic on Georgia 400. No, what really gets you, what really grabs you, what really turns you into a political junkie is … seein’em jump.”

If a false rumor about you is printed once, you can shrug it off as gossip. But if it’s printed twice, it becomes an accepted fact.

Rumors of sexual crime cannot simply be washed away, whereupon you’re clean again.

You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there’ll be nothing more to worry about, and instead you become a bigger and bigger slave to how you think others are judging you. ‘You have priceless silver and goblets of gold,’ said the philosopher, ‘but your reason is of common clay.’

Epictetus had once spoken as Charlie spoke now. “I have not yet confidence in what I have learned and assented to. Only let me gain confidence, and then I will show you the statue as it is when it is finished and polished. In such a way will I show myself to you—faithful, self-respecting, noble, free from tumult.”

for as Epictetus had said, “Like the bull, the man of noble nature does not become noble all of a sudden; he must train through the winter and make ready.”

“Of course,” the Mayor said softly. “You had just entered the political arena. It’s more intoxicating than any drug.”