Tom Wolfe--one of the leading exponents of the New Journalism, wedding novelistic to journalistic skill--was now, with his white suits and his dramatic manner, becoming a prominent public figure. Radical Chic, describing Leonard Bernstein's party for the Black Panthers, had roused the ire of the bien-pensants, led by Jason Epstein in The New York Review of Books. Mr. Buckley starts by asking, "Now when you read that passage [of Mr. Epstein's] did you feel guilty about how you handled the situation?" TW: "... He really wanted to establish the fact that somehow I was in league with...I believe he said Spiro Agnew, the Kent State grand jury ... No, somehow I couldn't bring myself to feel very guilty after reading that." And we're off on a joyous whirl through the current scene and the writer's craft.