Tom
Wolfe
Poor Tom, trivial Tom and a writer
named Wolfe or a story about just what
is happening with a fellow that has been
selling books to someone and that
someone might be you so I thought I’d
run through them all so maybe you
won’t have to—plus a few thoughts on
the state of America free of charge and
maybe a question at the end about
whether or not life is worth living so
that maybe you won't have to ask even
though the answer is in your hands . . .
. . . Anyway, the first time I read
Tom Wolfe was back in 1965. Really, I
first read about him. It was in Time, or
maybe it was Nesweek. Those two
magazines seem completely similar as
they get lost in the chiffon cloud of my
memory. Content (by that I mean
slant) doesn’t, from this far ridge of
time, seem distinguishable. Form does
seem so and both Time and Newsweek
seem the same in form—layout, print
have constsnt similarity like myriad of
faded photographs of people long since
forgotten.
Anyway, there was Tom, rakish,
hand-on-the-hip (hip hip) Tom. Smirk
for-a-smile Tom perusing one of his own
drawings looking as if he was a Welsh
highlander staring down to the bowl of
his pipe or a squat young Ben Franklin
first trying out newly-invented spec
tacles (news photos wreak!).
The article was a review of this fan
fan-fantastic new book called The
Kandy-Koiored Tangerine-Flake
Streamline Baby. The author was the
hip voyeur in the accompanying
photograph.
Custom cars
I read on with innocent eyes. Hip,
swiging author . . . All-night rock
blaring in the background while he
writes . . . Sharp-shootin’ Tom armed
with an American Studies Ph.D. in one
hand and in the other a style (man,
style!) that went rat-ta-ta-tat, bouncing
plastic pellets off everyone’s forehead
. . a genius, a sheer genius, wowie! . . .
Custom cars . . .
That was far enough—far freaking
out! Tom would say. Custom cars! That
was enough. I had to buy that book.
Custom cars! I had to venture out of my
world of paperbacks. I had to have this
book and I had to have it hard-bound.
Yes, hard-bound. I was so misguided.
It was the custom cars. I was
fascinated by the custom cars, but
maybe I should qualify that—I was
fascinated by Revell’s put-it-all
together-yourself-just-as-you-want-it
custom car models. I had to have that
book. It was the real thing. I even had
trouble putting the models together (too
much glue—lumpy customizing) but
this book was the real thing.
Real thing
As my fat-American-affluence
hand extended $5.50 to the old saleslady
at the PBS&W store in Prescott,
Arizona, and I left with the real thing.
Tom Wolfe was a custom car.
There was a consumer revolution
going on in America and the little old
saleslady didn't even know it and she
sold it to me. (Later at that same store I
would buy Susan Sontag’s Against
Interpretation on sale for a quarter—
which says more about small town
America than it does about Susan
Sontag.)
Then I read Tom’s book and I
wondered what was the difference
between Tom Wolfe and custom cars.
In that distant chiffon cloud of memory
they both seemed baroque—all
technique and no content.
So then I forgot Tom.
But he popped up again every so
often. I heard he was in trouble with the
New Yorker. Poor Tom took on the
literary scion of the establishment and
urbanity on 43rd Street got upset.
Seems Tom moved some of the fur
niture around in James Thurber’s of
fice or something.
Then Tom brought out two books on
the same “too-o-o-o-o-o freaking
much!” (if we can quote the New York
Times) day—The Pump House Gang
and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
This was
Illusion
TTiis was in late 1968 (I picked up a
copy of The Pump House Gang in
January, 1969).
A lot had happened in those years
since his first book. But poor Tom’s
latest almanac seemed much like poor
Tom’s first almanac. Reading Wolfe’s
first and second book seemed like
shifting from Jan and Dean to the
Beach Boys, a shift from Little Deuce
Coupe to Surfin’ U.S.A.
But after rereading—dig it—Wolfe
proved to be as elusive as a Dylan lyric.
Just what is he saying?
There seemed to be two sides to
Wolfe. First, the pen side that veritably
squealed from the page: Entertain!
Entertain! Entertain! And second, the
sword side that seemed to scream: just
what the hell is all this anyway?
Different America
What he presented in Kandy
Kolored was a different American
world than anyone else was giving
readers. Most non-fiction writers were
talking about Washington or Moscow or
even vague places like New Delhi or
Saigon. Other writers were concerned
with how long could the Yankees
Celtics-Packers go on winning. Others
were giving the latest statistics on iron
ore output, oil depletion, whopper
plastics. Others brought statistics on
who was marrying or divorcing whom.
Wolfe started putting it all together and
calling it a new, real, American
culture.
The people were not politicians;
they were disc jockeys and record
producers. The iron ore, oil depletion
and whopper plastics became strange
new cars built, not square Mondrian,
but rather abstract, streamline
baroque by men who were self-taught
engineers with the touch of scuptors.
They were the people, Wolfe was saying
who were taking an oblique blob of
affluence and molding it into a wide
grassroots American culture. We didn’t
build all those asphalt rivers for nuttin’
baby.
The American cultural heroes
became stock car racers and an up-and
coming loudmouth named Cassius
Clay. Society was sliding away from
debutante balls to Baby Jane Holzer at
a Stones concert.
Innocent
But it was really only the
chronicling of happenings. Kandy
Kolored presented really only an in
nocent saga of how Americans were
entertaining themselves. It was as
innocent as my young eyes when I first
read about them. We even had a
demolition derby in my small town
America. Wolfe was right. This was
Saturday Evening Post America all
done up in chaos and violence and
sealed in by plastic. And so, so en
tertaining.
that question of Dylan. Wolfe seemed to
start viewing the country with a cocked
head. Was that cynicism that popped
off of his pages? Wait a minute, folks,
just what the hell is all this anyway?
Still the entertainment: could we
enjoy all this?
••Tom”
Let Tom speak:
What struck me throughout
America and England was that so
many people have found such novel
ways of doing just that, enjoying, ex
tending their egos way out on the best
terms available, namely their own. It is
curious how many serious thinkers—
and politicians—resist this rather
obvious fact. Sheer ego extension—
especially if attempted by all those
rancid proles and suburban petty
burghers—is a perplexing prospect.
Even scary, one might say. In
tellectuals and politicians currently
But things changed right after 1965.
Our culture turned on us. The Beatles
suddenly became “Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely-Hearts Club Band.” They
weren’t singing “I Wanna Hold Your
Hand” anymore. They were singing
“Elinor Rigby,” “Fool on the Hill,” and
strange songs like “Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds.” The up-and-coming
loud mouth Cassius Clay had arrived
and was calling himself Muhammad
Ali. Saigon was no longer a vague
place—violence started melting
through the plastic. We were shifting
from wondering what to do with our
blob of affluence to a strident political
consciousness. Kids were no longer
dragging up and down main streets all
around the country but were drifting off
to strange places like San Francisco
and then to Chicago. It wasn’t an
America of speeding tickets anymore
but one of tear gas canisters and clubs.
Then with the Pump House Gang,
there emerged a dark, darker side to
Tom Wolfe.
We could still ask: What is he really
saying? Just as we always seem to ask
exhibit a vast gummy nostalgia for the
old restraints, the old limits, of the
ancient ego-crusher: Calamity.
Historically, calamity has been the one
serious concern of serious people. War,
pestilence—Apocalypse! I was im
pressed by the profound relief with
which intellectuals and politicians
discovered poverty in 1963, courtesy of
Michael Harrington’s book The Other
America. And, as I say, it was
discovered. Eureka! We have found it
again! We thought we had lost it. That
was the spirit of enterprise. When the
race riots erupted—and when the war
in Vietnam grew into a good-sized
hell—intellectuals welcomed all that
with a ghastly embrace too. War!
Poverty! Insurrection! Alienation! O
Four Horsemen, you have not deserted
us entirely. The game can go on.
One night, in the very middle of the
period when I was writing these stories,
I put on my electric-blue suit—it is truly
electric blue—and took part in a
symposium at Princeton with Gunter
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