Wednesday Open Mike: Tom Wolfe to Read

Tom Wolfe 1930–2018 by Mark Seliger

As you might already know, Famous Author ™ Tom Wolfe has died. Encomia proliferate.

David Douglas of Newsweek called him "more of a celebrity than the celebrities he describes," which was true at least when I was young. I don't know about the later big thick square novels—I once manfully tried to make it through Bonfire of the Vanities but fetched up against the rocky shores of my own inadequacies, and it was ugly. So will have to leave those discussions to others.

But there are a few of his slighter, lighter books that everyone, or maybe every American, should read. That list would include the early collection of magazine articles that helped make his reputation, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, which in my opinion is treasurable for the title alone. That essay was about George Barris and the Kustom Kulture movement, which treated hot rods primarily as pop art.

Another must-read for those in these environs is The Painted Word. Although it's primarily a send-up, and has certainly been accused of being reactionary—it inspired almost hysterical criticism when it appeared—the central thesis was dead serious and oh-by-the-way correct: that modern art had moved away from being primarily a visual experience. I'll often ask of a photograph, "but is it good to look at?" And the antecedent there is probably Wolfe.

The virtual "part two" of that line of cultural criticism was From Bauhaus to Our House, a similar but less controversial look at modern architecture. It's a less famous book—the modernist establishment had learned fast to contain and compartmentalize its outrage—but one that's even more entertaining to read. Having grown up summering in northern Michigan, I love these sentences from the book's opening: "Every new $900,000 summer house in the north woods of Michigan or on the shore of Long Island has so many pipe railings, ramps, hob-tread metal spiral stairways, sheets of industrial plate glass, and white cylindrical shapes, it looks like an insecticide refinery. I once saw the owners of such a place driven to the edge of sensory deprivation by the whiteness & lightness & leanness & cleanness & bareness & spareness of it all."

I know just the house he's talking about it. (And that "insecticide refinery" is a small but pure note of his genius—still makes me chuckle.) For entertaining reading, From Bauhaus to Our House is tough to beat.

And of course everybody should read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, because it's the single book of Wolfe's that, well, everybody should read. But then, you already knew that. All of these are entertaining reads, still. Wolfe was sui generis.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the often off-topic, anything-goes editorial page of TOP. Theoretically it appears on Wednesdays.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jack: "My wife was once a dinner party seat mate with Tom. His ice-breaker was 'What are you reading?' Fortunately she had just finished a book he was looking forward to reading himself. So she was the one recommending books. He was an excellent dinner partner as one would expect. And yes, he was all in white. But a photo of Tom must be in color."

Luis Aribe: "There is an essay by Tom Wolfe in Marie Cosindas's book, Color Photographs, on her images and on photography and photographers in general. It's a book well worth having just for her photographs, with the added bonus of Wolfe's essay."

John Camp: "I was sad to hear about Wolfe's death—he was a major part of the journalism I read when I was trying to decide what to do with my life, and for my decision to become a journalist, although I was never his kind of journalist.

"About The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House: There is a strain of what I consider to be fairly serious writing on visual art done by journalists. John Updike wrote three nice books of essays on art, all available at Amazon: Just Looking: Essays on Art, Always Looking: Essays on Art and Still Looking: Essays on Art. Robert Hughes was the Time art critic, but he was really a journalist who wrote on art (and other things) and looked with a skeptical eye upon the antics of the art world: 'The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive.' His books The Spectacle of Skill, The Shock of the New, and American Visions are all important and available at Amazon and are good and fun reading.

"I make a distinction between these guys and 'serious' art critics who are really theorists of modernity and post-whatever. These guys actually went out and looked at art and reported back on what they encountered. Too many serious critics, and particularly those who would get in an uproar and denigrate the work of Wolfe, Updike and Hughes (and they did), might look at some art, but what they reported on were usually artifacts of their own imagination...which was not nearly as rich as they thought it was."

Stephen Scharf: "What the hey, no mention of The Right Stuff? Now, that is a good read."

Rick Denney: "I still love Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. It's probably more controversial than the essays you mentioned, though it resonates with my own flak-catching experience. But it follows the notion that the shorter he wrote, the more taut he became. About The Right Stuff, Neil Armstrong opined that a guy who never left his apartment in Manhattan was unlikely to know what really happened. So, sometimes we read for style more than substance. Wolfe was loaded with it. R.I.P."

Bruce Rubenstein: "I can understand having a rough time with Gravity's Rainbow, but Bonfire of the Vanities? Really? Maybe one had to have lived in NYC. I'm also a little surprised by a child of the '60s not mentioning The Right Stuff."

Andrew Lamb: "Bonfire of the Vanities falters towards the end. Not sure that it has aged well. Surely, the one to read is The Right Stuff?"

Chuck Albertson: "The Right Stuff is brilliant and hilarious, about 20 percent of it made it into the (excellent) movie. If you can find it, a draft of the book first ran in Rolling Stone, with photos by Annie Leibowitz. I also like Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter & Vine, a collection of essays from the '70s that is a rollicking takedown of the Me Generation."

Geoff Wittig: "I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Wolfe, despite his writings' tendency to degenerate into self-parody, because of his sincere appreciation for the place of technical skill, of craft, in the visual arts. He wrote a brilliant and heartfelt eulogy for sculptor Frederick Hart exploring this concept; and was predictably criticized for his retrograde philistinism by the gatekeepers of 'contemporary art.' And it's hard not to have a bit of admiration for his ability to pull off the 'dandy' role in an age when it has become largely passé."

Mani Sitaraman: "More than four decades ago, when I was 14, I read Tom Wolfe's The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, the very first of his books that I was to read. Suddenly, everything my English teacher told me about writing prose didn't matter anymore. What a blast!

"Googling reveals numerous excellent, mannered portraits of Tom Wolfe, who was photogenic. There seem to be two schools of thought regarding images that accompany obituaries of notable public figures who die in old age. The first seems prefer the use of a very recent portrait, to reveal the person as they were in the times just before their passing. The other, like the use of a picture of the person when they first achieved fame. That's my preference, too. Here is a picture of Tom Wolfe in 1968, a couple of years after The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby was published. A perfect New York City environmental portrait by Sam Falk for the New York Times.

"Rest in peace, Tom Wolfe."

Carsten Bockermann: "Back in early 1999 I had the good fortune of meeting Tom Wolfe in New York City, where he was reading out of his then-new novel A Man in Full (great book, in my humble opinion).

"Of course, he was dressed in a white suit, just as one would expect."

D. Hufford: "I must get over my laziness about writing to write just a bit about Tom Wolfe. After all, as a native West Virginian, I owe him for his portrayal of another native West Virginian, Chuck Yeager, in The Right Stuff. Compare that with what we get nowadays with simplistic, shallow stereotyping stuff as Hillbilly Elegy.

"I am not an expert on his work, but that which I have read I have thoroughly enjoyed. I love his ability to gore sacred cows and to irritate those who need to be irritated: "Radical Chic: That party at Lenny’s" [the article in the June 8, 1970 issue of New York magazine —Ed.] is still relevant, today, methinks. And I had started reading Bonfire of the Vanities just a few days ago. I have never watched the movie and although I have only begun the book, I already know the movie would be a disappointment. The scene where the husband who says he is going out to walk the dog and while out mistakenly calls his wife and asks if his girlfriend is there. The surprise and humor and the knowledge that this is the sort of stupid thing real people do would never be shown as well on film. Later, couple living in a small, rather shabby apartment but with pretensions and a British maid are relieved to find that she is racist. Relieved because they had been worried that with her British accent and her past experience of working for wealthier people, she was judging them and looking down on them. Finding her a racist restored their sense of superiority. This seems so real to me. Yeah, that’s the way some of our 'betters' are.

"I am sorry to see him go."

Jack: "Tom wrote The Right Stuff in book form in 1979. It made a hero of Chuck Yeager to the people who hadn’t followed flying by explaining how he first broke the sound barrier in a rocket plane. To me, I didn’t need to read the book for him to be my hero. Months before the book was published, I was with General Yeager on the Bonneville Salt Flats with a small group attempting to break the sound barrier on land in the Budweiser Rocket Car. So naturally we brought the General in for the effort. The test run at 400 miles an hour was scary as the nose raised up off the ground and the nose wheel was how the driver steered. The telemetry was analyzed to determine how much adjustment would be required in the forward fin to keep the front from lifting off without also pushing it into the salt flats. In 1979 things were slow to compute and it took six hours to calculate. Five hours before that, Chuck told me he estimated it would require 6 degrees angle down. After much calculating over the hours, the computer declared a recommended angle of down 5.9 degrees. Chuck looked at me and said, 'See, I’ve still got it.'"

Comments

[Speed]

He always looked like a caricature of himself.

[George]

He was a real character and I loved his books. I will miss him.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

I’m not an avid fiction reader but I have read Bonfire, Bauhaus, and Word and enjoyed each. But I gotta say Tom Wolfe was a very gassy guy who often seemed to write to write. But his was surely a large, flamboyant life well-lived. Resting in peace seems like the last thing he’ll want to do.

[Del Bomberger]

Love that cover which looks an awful lot like my red '59 Chevy Impala Convertible that made many of my HS teachers jealous in '67. It had a monster engine that drank gas like I drink Pepsi-maybe more so. It was a boat, and we often had 8 people riding around it-sans seatbelts-"the horror". Could put the top up and six people in the trunk as we drove into the Drive-In theater and then they could pop up through the convertible storage area into the car before we lowered it again. Them was the days-at least some of them. It's on my reading list for sure.

[Manuel]

"The Bonfire Of Vanities" is probably the only novel by Tom Wolfe known here in Europe - at least outside certain circles.
I'm not so fond of contemporary American literature, which I find to oscillate between the inedible (e. g. Gore Vidal) and the shallow and ultimately pointless - I remember reading a short story by Raymond Carver in which a couple weeps over a freon leak from their refrigerator! -, but "The Bonfire Of Vanities" is a good attempt at creating characters with a modicum of depth and content. It's a cynical take on humankind - no one has anything really good inside them -, which is not unlike the rather bitter and angry Émile Zola. And many of the characters are quite cliché. I must say, however, that it was a pleasurable reading. While I wouldn't compare it to, say, Celine's "Journey To The End Of The Night", it's a close-up and humorous view into the weaknesses of people.

[K4kafka]

You might also cite,”The Painted Word”,Wolfe’s critical essay on the NY art scene circa 1975.

[Lawrence Plummer]

Don't forget the very approachable "The Right Stuff".

[Al C.]

Pace David Douglas, I would have said of Wolfe that he was possessed of more hubris and vanity than the protagonists he describes. Have you read his contempt-soaked “criticism” of Darwin and Chomsky, and of the Big Bang? If you need a good laugh, read his alternative theories. Seriously, how much effort or insight does it take to do yet another piling-on on modern art/architecture by pointing at poor examples? No question that Wolfe has a knack for neologisms and sniffing out smugness in the odd corners of contemporary culture. However, I find it odd that a person who delights in holding up a mirror to society does not at least once in a while turn that mirror around and take a peek in it.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

OUCH! That photo!

I think that photo reduced my respect for the subject by at least 10%. It shrieks "phony" at about 150 decibels, to me.

The Right Stuff is of course the book of his most noted in my social circles.

[Thomas Walsh]

Wolfe also wrote about the surf culture. He spent some time at Windansea beach in La Jolla and interviewed the surfers. His book, The Pump House Gang, got its title from a city structure ( literally a pumping station) near the beach where the surfers gathered. I surfed there, but never saw Wolfe. My favorite Wolfe was the Acid Test. Who couldn't love Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters? Tom Walsh

[Tom Burke]

I've only read two things by Wolfe: Acid Test, and the Rolling Stone articles that became The Right Stuff, or were re-used in the latter. Of those, it was the former that had the bigger impact. I was in my late teens in the UK and in the space of about 6 months I happened to read both Acid Test and On The Road. To me these books (along with much of the music of the time) shouted 'America!', and I desperately wanted to get there. Alas, not until the new millennium did I manage to do so, by which time both those books were curiosities; memories of a time already past.

I've never re-read any of these books. I'm happy with my memories - which are possibly of the experience of reading Acid Test, etc, rather than of the book itself. It's a bit like the Kennedy assassination - do you remember what you were doing when you read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?

[D. Hufford]

I must get over my laziness about writing to write just a bit about Tom Wolfe. After all, as a native West Virginian, I owe him for his portrayal of another native West Virginian, Chuck Yeager, in “The Right Stuff.” Compare that with what we get nowadays with simplistic, shallow stereotyping stuff as “Hillbilly Elegy.”

I am not an expert on his work, but that which I have read I have thoroughly enjoyed. I love his ability to gore sacred cows and to irritate those who need to be irritated: “Radical Chick: That party at Lenny’s” is still relevant, today, methinks. And I had started reading “Bonfire of the Vanities” just a few days ago. I have never watched the movie and although I have only begun the book, I already know the movie would be a disappointment. The scene where the husband who says he is going out to walk the dog and while out mistakenly calls his wife and asks if his girlfriend is there. The surprise and humor and the knowledge that this is the sort of stupid thing real people do would never be shown as well on film. Later, couple living in a small, rather shabby apartment but with pretensions and a British maid are relieved to find that she is racist. Relieved because they had been worried that with her British accent and her past experience of working for wealthier people, she was judging them and looking down on them. Finding her a racist restored their sense of superiority. This seems so real to me. Yea, that’s the way some of our "betters" are.

I am sorry to see him go.

[Joseph Reid]

Wolfe certainly knew how to put together words for effect. I've only read two of his books, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and "The Right Stuff." Both left me with the impression that he found great stories to tell and fascinating people to observe but while he reported and researched them exhaustively he was interested, above all, in impressing the reader with his style. And for me, his style interfered with the information and my desire to find out what happens next. Among Wofle's generation of writers of non-fiction in English, John McPhee remains my favorite.

[Mark Kinsman]

It's been a long time since I read any of Wolfe's book. At the time, they were quite enjoyable and led to reading his Rolling Stone contributions while in college. As many have pointed out, he did have his controversies, but he will be missed. One of the good ones from modern literary times.

[Frank Petronio]

My favorite Wolfe book is "I Am Charlotte Simmons" where the 74-year old male writes from the perspective of a modern female college student with more grace and empathy than anything I've ever read from contemporaries. Wolfe emphatically did his homework whether he was writing about drug culture or aviation. And I think that future historians will value his works as the most important and best descriptions of what it was like to be American during 1965-2005.

You really should read all of his books, they are all accessible and great.

[Mark]

Sorry I’m late to comment. Tom would understand that. I readily admit to not having read books through my life. Read magazines etc, just not books. But The Right Stuff I loved. But I digress.

In the mid ‘80s I was a Court Reporter in New York Supreme Court working with Justice Michael R. Juviler. We had a jury deliberating on a murder case. The court officers made a lot of overtime pay back then when they would accompany deliberating juries overnight to a hotel if they couldn’t reach a verdict in the first day. This judge, in an effort to save the state money, would keep juries very late into the evening and we finally got a verdict st 11 pm. The officers were not happy that they didn’t get their overnighter.

I lived a few blocks from the courthouse. As I departed the building, I see his Honor standing next to his car with a flat tire. I said no problem, judge, I’ll fix it for you. I then noticed he had not one but two flats.

I drove him home. Thought he lived nearby. An hour later we pulled up to his home. He was very appreciative.

Next day he summoned me to chambers and handed me Bonfire of the Vanities and in it he inscribed “Glad our late night drive turned out better than this one.”

I read that book. Loved it.

[KeithB]

It does appear that he became a curmudgeonly victim of Dunning-Kruger in his final years. "The Kingdom of Speech" is a fairly ignorant screed. Check out Jerry Coyne's review.

[Julian]

Funnily enough, I didn't find 'Bonfire of the Vanities' tough going at all but I did give up on 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' because it was just a bit repetitive and, well, dull.

Sad to hear he has died, though.