Posted on 09/14/2023 6:13:34 PM PDT by Rummyfan
Long before the rest of us were talking about blue and red America, Tom Wolfe not only recognized the cultural divide; he bridged it. When he began his career in the 1960s, the liberal establishment was more dominant and even smugger than it is today. There were no pesky voices on cable television or the web to challenge the Eastern elites’ hold on the national media. Then along came Wolfe, a lone voice celebrating the hinterland’s culture, mercilessly skewering the pretensions and dogmas of New York’s intelligentsia—and somehow triumphing.
How did he get away with it? The most entertaining analysis opens in theaters this weekend in New York and next weekend in Los Angeles and Toronto. The documentary, Radical Wolfe, is a superb chronicle of his life and career, told through footage of Wolfe (who died in 2018 at the age of 88) expounding in his famous white suits. It features the Jon Hamm reading from Wolfe’s work along with interviews with his friends and enemies, his daughter, Alexandra Wolfe, and his fans, including Christopher Buckley, Niall Ferguson, Gay Talese, and Peter Thiel. Director Richard Dewey draws on the insights and research of Michael Lewis, who pored through the archive of Wolfe’s letters and papers for a 2015 article in Vanity Fair, “How Tom Wolfe Became . . . Tom Wolfe.”
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
Exactly!
Loved reading his stuff
Mao Maoing the Flack Catchers is a classic
Tom Wolfe did with his typewriter what Rush Limbaugh would later do with a microphone.
Wolfe skewered and mocked pretentious liberals.
Rush was more politically partisan. Wolfe infuriated his targets without letting on his political choices.
“In footage from “Firing Line,” when William F. Buckley Jr. asked him to describe his political views, Wolfe quoted Balzac’s description of the politics in his novels: “I belong to the party of the opposition.”
Bonfire of the Vanities, it was a 1980s bullseye.
My first exposure to him was The Bonfire of the Vanities. He did a pretty good job skewering the 1980’s too.
I have always intended to read him but never got around to it. It’s time to change that.
“Bonfire of the Vanities, it was a 1980s bullseye.”
I don’t think he ever wrote a bad book.
And unlike a lot of authors his stuff never seems dated even when it was written 40 or 50 years ago.
I bet YouTube has got some of his interviews, maybe Buckley and Cavett.
“Isn’t The Right Stuff one of his works? If so, it is one of the most epic books I have ever read.”
It is. The one that the movie is based upon.
I like the fact that the movie has Real Chuck Yeager playing a bit part.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid test and The Pump House Gang were my favorites. The era I came from.
To name a few....
I think that a lot of the Wolfe that I read must have been magazine pieces.
I did read Radical Chic, Bonfire of the Vanities, The Right Stuff. And Probably some others. If Electric Kool-Aid Acid test is about Neil Cassady and the Merry Pranksters then I read that too.
In America BTI, before the internet, I used to read books and magazines. We probably all did. Now like the junkies we are we have dumped the printed word for mainlining internet dope.
Yes, the magic bus and Ken Kesey.
His essay “The Last American Hero” — about the stock car racing legend Junior Johnson — was the greatest piece of documentary nonfiction I’ve ever read.
Merry Pranksters with Ken Keasey. Spelling error probably. Kin K wrote One flew over the Coo Coos nest. Had lots of money and did lots of acid and traveled around in a bus with the Merry Pranksters. The Grateful Dead played at a lot of the acid parties. A realistic look at the ‘60s acid scene with lots of words which went into hippy language of the early ‘70s
Gotta say to all, I’m not that familiar with Wolfe, but the audiobook of Bonfire of the Vanities was one of the best I’ve listened to. Highly recommended. The reader does amazing stuff, don’t think it would have been as good if I was just reading it myself.
I read that book and it was very well written. The Movie was a disaster, bad casting for one, but the script was changed and it went from a great drama to some sort of Comedy-Drama that was awful.
Tom Hanks was just not Sherman McCoy, and then they substituted a black judge at the end for a Jewish one like in the book.
You’re right, Ken Kesey.
Neil Cassady was Jack Kerouac’s buddy, and in Jack’s “On the Road” Dean Moriarty is based on Cassady.
It’s weird how the 50’s beat poets were the pioneers for the ‘60s. So were some other social threads that had originated in pre WWII California.
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