Tom Wolfe Books

For anyone remotely interested in McLuhan, I recommend this book for the following reasons.
It is a much easier read than most of McLuhan's work, as it is a collection of interviews and speeches which are necessarily more concise, and were for me much more involving.
It gives an insight into McLuhan's theories which can be quite puzzling and abstruse at first. In his speeches and essays, he repeats his same themes in a variety of manners, which help to give the reader a better understanding of the theories.
It's no McLuhan for Idiots (I'm not sure if there is such a thing, based on the nature of his works), but it is definitely a very useful and enjoyable companion book.

Words Of Ages: Witnessing U.S. History Through Literature is a remarkable 320 page trade paperback book that takes a unique, ground-breaking approach to showcase American history by using letters, journal entries, short stories, and poetry to illustrate the American experience through pen of some of America's greatest authors and historical figures. Included are more than 125 excerpts from such luminaries as Booker T. Washington, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Tom Wolf, Thomas Paine, Chief Tecumseh, Frederick Douglass, Robert Frost, and a host of other to provide an accessible context for understanding the events, places, and people that shaped American history, culture and politics. Words Of Ages is divided chronological into units ranging from "Voices of a Revolution" and "Civil War and Reconstruction", to "Social Critics and Reformers" and "The Vietnam Years". This dynamic, interdisciplinary blending of literature, history, and art provide a most unusual, effective, and academically sound approach that will be read with enthusiasm by anyone with an interest in American history.

When I first learned to carve, three years back, I was shown how on a Yam, and shown the cover of this book.

It is a great book to learn carving! Tom takes you step by step through three different faces. The photos really show the cuts well.

Only after carving for some time did the variety of techniques he used hit me. He used several different methods for creating faces between the three examples... different ways of depicting eyes, starting noses and such. He also used a combination of knife and gouge techniques.

It's easy, and inexpensive to experiment. The tools necessary are VERY cheap. I usually use either an old carving knife, or a favorite exacto-knife, and a set of the cheapest gouges since yams carve so easily. You can get really good prices on yams as the fall and winter holidays approach.

I carved a couple dozen yams for christmas ornaments that year.

Then I went out and found a wood carving club and made the jump to woodcarving.

But I still go back to the fun of Yam carving every so often. It's easy on my hands, and it's fun to get a whole face done in about one half hour. Then wait to see how it comes out when dry!

I recommend giving the yams a spray of 'Lysol' every so often as they dry, to keep them from molding, or use a food dehydrator to speed the drying up!

A great book to start carving with!

-Bob

On the plus side, The Bonfire of the Vanities compares well with Balzac's stuff. I mean, the methods are similar. The story follows several very different characters living in New York, and each scene is detailed, particularized, analyzed, painted with a very fine brush. Many layers of New York's society are represented. There are no moral messages, no lessons to be learned, just life in New York in the late 'Eighties or early 'Nineties at its most intense, presented as "business as usual," with corrupt politicians, lascivious prosecutors, moronic members of the jury, conceited stock market honchos, cynical lawyers, less-than-bright policemen, political opportunists, socialites, priests, opera singers, real estate agents with five thousand dollar manicures, rich faithful wives who deserve to be strangled, only it never occurs to anyone to strangle them, mistresses on the make, petty criminals, silly immigrants, bone-headed journalists, feminists of both genders, racial and ethnic tension - and on and on. The book is really a lot of fun.

On the other hand, the opus falls just short of making its author, well, "the Balzac of our time." No scene is picturesque enough to be called cinematographic, and for a novel 800 pages long that's a bit, well, loquacious (on the author's part). The author tends to explain too much, and fits people and scenes together in such a way as to promote his own outlook, leaving the attentive reader no choice but to examine it. Upon closer examination, one realizes that Mr. Wolfe's main purpose is to show that people in general are vile, selfish, obtuse creatures (without exception); that life is a pretty ridiculous affair; and that any joy a person ever derives from living is brief, accidental, and usually comes at the expense of others. To put it plainly, THERE IS NO GOD in this novel. It was written by a fierce atheist. There is neither faith, hope, nor love in it. None. Life is algebraically plain and tedious.

(I realize I said earlier there were no moral messages in the book. There aren't any. The above is an OUTLOOK, not a message).

Literature thrives on extraordinary situations in which characters are inspired to perform extraordinary acts. The element of surprise in Wolfe's novel is purely circumstantial. Folks have no fre will in this story. (All atheists are determinists more or less by definition, I suppose).

In the past, I've had some interesting experiences related to the publication of this novel. Two years after it came out (in the early 'Nineties, I believe), the news finally reached the Philistines, and by Philistines I mean those representatives of the middle class (and, sometimes, the upper middle class; I have nothing to say about the actual upper class since no one, not even the representatives of the said class themselves, can figure out what the hell they're up to, what it is they do all day, and what their problem is) ... uh ... where was I? ... Philistines ... those representatives of the middle class that once in a while make a half-hearted effort to appear CULTURED, which, in their view, means catching a program on the History Channel once in a while and telling others that they're reading "this book, it's actually pretty good." They never seem to finish this book. I mean, they sort of struggle through the first twenty pages, and then skim through the rest, and make plans to read it properly when they visit Aruba next year, or some such. They're always too busy, they never have any "free time." One gets the impression that if they stopped being busy for a moment, civilization would just collapse and never recover. Anyway, this dude had a copy of "Bonfire" in his briefcase and was telling me (his colleague) how everybody had recommended this book to him. He was going to read it when he had some free time. He actually DID take it to Aruba (there was also a wife involved, I believe). He came back, I believe, without having finished it. A year later he died. He was a good guy, too. Reading just wasn't "his thing," as Philistines like to say.

Anyway, when "Bonfire" came out, the hype was considerable, which for me is nearly always a turn-off. And then the movie came out (which, incidentally, was far more politically incorrect than the book, and the choice of actors and actresses was just UNBELIEVABLE; I loved it). So I put off reading "Bonfire" until, oh, I don't know, maybe after 9/11. By that time, home video games had become astonishingly popular, and crime rates started dropping everywhere across the nation, including New York (for which then-Mayor Giuliani took all the credit, of course). When I finally got to read it, the novel struck me as a bit dated. Not that any issues described in it with a flourish, social and otherwise, had become a thing of the past. The overall societal set of problems had shifted a little since the novel's publication, that's all.

The story is constantly balancing on the edge of political correctness, even though it never goes beyond the boundaries, not once. Even so, few other authors would dare show a book that probes so many "untouchable," "sacred-cow" issues to an editor, and few editors would touch a book of this sort with a hundred-foot pole. The advantage of being Tom Wolfe, I suppose, is that during the decades he spent being a journalist and creating his own style (starting back in the '60's), the man gradually accustomed everyone to the fact that he says outrageous things and gets away with it. The degree of outrage has increased over the years, and today Mr. Wolfe can get away (I would imagine) with saying pretty much anything, because he knows that no one will take it (or him) seriously.

It is worth remembering, while reading this novel, that its author belongs to the glorious school of Southern authors with New York careers: the crux of American literature. God bless.

Tom Wolfe excels at culture, or at least he certainly used to, pulling together the genuine thoughts and actions of various subsets of people and so capturing the essential creature of a movement.

In this, Bonfire never disappoints. He shows us glitzy and amoral Wall Street moneymakers, portraits of an imploding criminal justice system, variously-motivated community 'opinion leaders', and more. All of this takes ages to set up, pushing the essential action back a few hundred pages as the forces-that-be dance. Nonetheless, Wolfe performs his monkey-trick, still new at this stage in his career: all of these cultural -elements-as-characters collide at once.

Because Wolfe is so talented at culture-writing, the story comes off brilliantly. And yet, it *is* culture-writing. If you aren't willing to read deeply into each of these culture characters, you will despise the immense exposition afforded them. Wolfe remains interested largely in the culture side, and his characters are more cultural stand-ins than timeless personages.

Bonfire of the Vanities is a terrific vision of New York in the bond trader's heyday, which few describe more vividly than Wolfe. But perhaps it is not a whole lot else.

I do not think an author puts more into his books than Wolfe. This is a story so much more than about the greedy 80's. As you are reading you are saying to yourself exactly what Wolfe saids seconds later, as if he is in your mind. Its about political correctness gone awry. And its so "New York City" and you have to live and work there to totally see how Wolfe is so accurate even 20 years later.

Sadly now as you read this great novel, you think to the disaster of a movie. So altered and so miscast. And reading about the making of the movie, the same fictional pressures of politically correctness in the book hampered the actual movie. For example Morgan Freeman's a great actor but his character is totally different than the book. This is a movie that SHOULD BE RE-MADE.

In any event The Bonefire of the Vanities is a MUST read.

Given the current graft, greed, and "me,me,me" on wallstreet (what's new) this book might be a little outdated but is still one the funniest ironic books about New Yorkers, and especially Wall Streeters, I've read.

In all 31 flavors of "Law and Order on TV, the NYPD and DA's office disposes of a case from the incident to the trial in an hour--sometimes two if it's a two-part episode. In "Bonfire of the Vanities" Tom Wolfe does the same thing in about 700 pages. That's because Wolfe brings to bear all the complexities of trying a case in the real world.

In the mid-1980s, Sherman McCoy is a bond salesman at Pierce & Pierce, a self-described "Master of the Universe" with a three million-dollar apartment on Park Avenue, a wife who spends thousands on decorating it, a six-year-old daughter who attends a pricey private school, and a mistress named Maria Ruskin, who herself is wealthy from marrying a much-older man. One night Sherman goes to pick Maria up at the airport and their Mercedes Benz becomes lost on the seedy streets of the Bronx. They're approached by two black kids, and from there the "Master of the Universe" becomes an unwitting pawn of a black "reverend" hungry for publicity, a drunken British reporter hungry for a story, and a Bronx DA hungry for re-election. Because in the real world, cases aren't solved in an hour and "justice" is a game won or lost based on who can cheat the most and get away with it.

Like an ancient Greek tragedy, McCoy has to pay for his hubris. So do some of the other characters, although others are seemingly rewarded for their bad behavior. This is certainly not a novel of white hats and black hats where the good guys triumph and the bad guys get their just reward. If you want that, you'd better stick to the TV.

What Wolfe does so well with this book is to paint the "big picture" of New York City in the 1980s with its melting pot of Irish, Italians, Jews, blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Wasps. All of these rival factions collide with the McCoy case to depict not just the justice system, but society as a whole. It's an unflattering image to say the least, even viewed through the prism of satire. More importantly, the image of black against white and rich against poor is still applicable today in America's major cities. That makes Wolfe's book as relevant today as it was back in the `80s.

Wolfe's writing itself can get a little tedious and long-winded at times. There are so many nuances and complexities and tangents going on throughout the book. While these provide richness and depth, at some point it becomes overkill. The stuff about the mayor and the Episcopal Church was interesting, but not really necessary. As well there are...so many ellipses...and exclamation points! It can be a little irritating after 700 pages.

Still, it's a relatively minor flaw in what is a great book that even at 700 pages shouldn't take too long to read because it's so funny and clever that it's hard to put down. I had previously read Wolfe's "Man in Full" that came out ten years after "Bonfire of the Vanities" and has many of the similar themes of race, class, and a rich man in legal peril, though it takes place in Atlanta instead of New York. I'd recommend that book as well.

As for the 1990 movie of "Bonfire of the Vanities" it pretty much makes every critic's worst list, so I wouldn't recommend that. The movie does stick to at least most of the book's main points. In its defense, it would be impossible to depict all the subtleties and nuances of Wolfe's novel on the big screen. Trying to adapt it really was an impossible mission.

That is all...

Tom Wolfe takes us through part of the acid-movement of the 60's with Ken Kesey (author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") and company as they embark on their journey across America to popularize acid. Wolfe writes in a way that sort of makes you feel that you are on acid too. His writing style in this book is very unique and he has an incredible way of describing things which is one thing I really enjoyed. Now I can finally understand what many of those baby-boomers went through!

This is a benchmark of non fiction. From reading it, one can understand why. This book has an insane and inspiring stylistic prose, but that isn't to say it isn't flawed. I personally think it rambles a bit, repeats itself, but such is the nature of a hallucinogenic experience. This book is now over forty years old and still seems rather fresh. I can't think of a single non fiction article, or book for that matter I have read in my life time that is as wild as this one... maybe "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas", but that would be the only book comparable.( Ironically, Hunter S. Thompson did lend some notes to Tom Wolfe for this book, as stated in the end.)

Still, in the end, I do think this book has a bit of that "style over substance" thing. In the end, I'm not left with much besides the style. I read about a lot of hallucinogenic drug use, some of which was interesting( see "The Unspoken Thing" chapter) and some of it not. The story was funny at times, and it gave me quite a laugh. But I didn't experience many epiphanies while reading it.

But these people, these Pranksters, sure did have a funky zest for life that is rather infectious. You can certainly feel that much in the space of these pages. This is a fun read, but unless you are a fan of the time and place in which it takes place, it is probably best sticking to alternate and condensed texts on the subject.

There are storybooks, there are psychedelic books, and then there is The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. It is the true story of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and their physical voyage across the United States, as well as their symbolic voyage through the universe. As much as this can be considered a book about drugs and hippies, it can more accurately be viewed as a spiritual journey that not only exemplifies a culture and a time period, but also an idyllic way of life. Read it. And read it again while taking notes. Then live it.

[..]

!!Freeeeeeaky!! (Almost)::::dated
So, Tom Wolfe tries to describe the Hip-Acid-Flower-Love groove. It is effective--SOMEWHAT--though his book blots up extra words and bloats up too many pages ("There is too much distance between the covers of this book.")
Kerouac was accused of typing--instead of writing--in creation of "On The Road". And since this is but a sequel to "On the Road". . .(Neal Cassady is really in this book!). . . Wolfe is guilty of. . .too much typing {[(and too much TyPeSeTTing here)]}. . .but he does write, too. . .effectively enough so I, think, I don't need to try LSD. Effectively enough, so I become nostolgic, at times, for that time of Haight-Ashbury, for that time of innocent experimentation, for that time of "braless breasts jiggling and cupcake bottoms wiggling" (that's Wolfe!). . .
. . .but enough after 200ish pages; I want to be out of Wonderland. . .out of the pudding. . .off the bus. . .

Very interesting account of the birth of the Hippie Movement in America (if not the world). When Wolfe's words are flowing it's awesome. But his jumbling up of styles, though intended to reflect what he was experiencing, more often than not, is boring and a bit pretentious. Specifically, when he attempts Kerouacian spontaneous prose, it largely comes off, for me anyways, as gimmicky. I wish he would have to stuck to a straight ahead style...I think the craziness and uniqueness of what he was witnessing would have still come through. Overall, though, worth the time spent reading it.

The Right Stuff is essential reading for any student of post-war western popular history whether or not you are interested in aviation and the space-race. Even if you dont hold with the concept of 'top three' books and the like, once you have read this, it will always come to mind when you are put on the spot and have to name your favourites.

In the years following WWII and Korea as the military graduated to fighter jets a certain hierarchy of talent developed. At the top of the pyramid were those in "flight test," where pilots with a certain indefinable something went to push the limits of the newest and most advanced jets. Landing several tons of metal atop a heaving and pitching aircraft carrier in the dark of night or "hanging your hide on the outside of the envelope" in experimental jets is a dangerous profession requiring what Mr. Wolfe calls "the Right Stuff." From Chuck Yeager, the first to exceed the speed of sound (Mach 1), to John Glenn and the other Mercury astronauts, few possess this right or "righteous stuff," and many are "left behind" on the climb up that pyramid. Mr. Wolfe introduces us to those who had it and some who died lacking it, as well as the competition of the "Space Race" of the 60s, and does so with a very distinct style that conveys the attitude of those who possessed it. The missions of the Mercury astronauts are covered in particular detail and sort of form the pinnacle of this story, from the enormous egos of some to the petty jealousies and politics that played out behind the perfect facade Life Magazine presented to the nation.

In fact, the most singular aspect of this book for me would be the style with which it is written, dripping with the huge egos and arrogance of the pilots. Theirs is a dangerous job with few monetary rewards, requiring them to sacrifice family life and comfort, but carrying a thrill few people will ever experience. This, Mr. Wolfe explains, results in a feeling of superiority which he portrays excellently with his writing. And he conveys this attitude with certain phrases he uses repeatedly throughout, such as the "right stuff" or "flying & drinking, and drinking & driving," or the "Friend of Widows and Orphans," etc. It becomes a kind of shorthand for the concepts within the fraternity of pilots and their families. It's very interesting to learn of the lives and successes and defeats, particularly Chuck Yeager and John Glenn. But it is also this style which began to wear on me after a while - on the one hand the story is incredibly interesting, but on the other I got really tired of reading it and couldn't wait to just be done with the book. Also, the language of the book is pretty coarse, and hardly a page goes by that doesn't have several profanities or vulgarities, so be forewarned if you're bothered by that. But a fascinating story nonetheless and I can't wait to watch the movie now.

Bang! Zoom! Pow!

If you like prose that crackles like sparklers in your eyes, and tells a good story besides, then Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff", about the Mercury 7 spaceflight program of the early 1960s, is for you.

Published in 1979, back when the U.S. was the world's laughing stock and "malaise" was the operative word from the White House, "The Right Stuff" calls to mind with equal degrees of snark and awe a time when real heroes walked the earth and flew beyond and around it. Men, yes, but heroes, too. Wolfe never lets go of the human element, in fact, the best thing "The Right Stuff" has going for it.

As a non-fiction novel, it has its limitations, too. Wolfe doesn't make up quotes, he hardly quotes the seven Mercury astronauts at the center of the story, except for flight transcripts and press conferences where their words are public record. But he doesn't seem to channel theirs or anyone else's voices, except Wolfe's own.

Beginning with the book's title, he uses a lot of terms to capture what the early U.S. space program, and the test flights on experimental jets leading up to it, were really about. Terms like "the great ziggurat" "flying & drinking and drinking & driving", "true brother", "the mighty integral", often in caps, get a lot of use even though there's no sign anyone ever used them or even thought them up before Wolfe did.

There's an overall tone of omnipotence that feels smug and gets in the way: Never mind what was going through John Glenn's mind when he was wondering if Friendship 7's heat shield had burned up on atmospheric reentry - here's what he REALLY MUST have thought!

But the book is so entertaining, it really compensates for Wolfe's excesses. The astronauts were not breaking new ground; everything they did the Soviets did too, except sooner and for longer durations. But they were putting their lives on the line as investments toward a larger purpose, an achievement no other country has matched in close to 40 years, landing on the moon. And they were also disproving the notion that Americans after World War II were doomed to failure, that "our boys always botch it" mentality which hung over the country at the time (and which by 1979 was back with a vengeance).

Sharp, funny, and full of graspable insights (the riders of the first Mercury capsules had as much control over their craft as does a Ferris-wheel rider), "The Right Stuff" may settle for entertainment over enlightenment, but it is very entertaining.

As a 'random' book to pick up and read, I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of information provided in this book. I also enjoyed the writing style. Excellent excellent, must-read book!

This book is one of the best accounts of, indeed any scene, I have ever read. Wolfe, with his half academic half layman writing style, explores the men and indeed the whole phenomenon, that was the American space program in the 50ies and 60ies. In a delightful manner he gets to the heart of what makes the people involved "tick", and does a great job in bringing their feelings and through to the reader. The reader can truly emerge him/herself in this exciting world of fast planes, fast cars, hope, fear and glory.

The only thing "wrong" with this book is that it is too short. I would've loved to see 50-75 more pages telling more about the "aftermath", as it were, but that is merely because the book was such a jolly good read to begin with. And, I must add, I'm not even interested in planes, speed or space programs or indeed American history.

Highest possible recommendation.

Tom Wolfe, that most trenchant of all observers of contemporary American society, turns his gaze to the world of painting and drawing during the first seventy-five years or so of the twentieth century in this book, published in 1975.

Just about anybody with eyes has, I think, wondered by what criterion a good deal of the painting during this period can be considered art. Few of us, however, have Wolfe's command of language to explain the complete vapidity of the work produced during the period that he covers, nor the ability, nearly unique to Wolfe, of allowing artists, critics, and theorists' own words to expose that vapidity.

This is indeed a refreshing work, and written with Wolfe's usual mastery.

This book provides a humorous, easy to read look at the world of modern art. It was a pleasure to read!

If your interest is writing or art, you'll enjoy The Painted Word by Tom Wolf. If you like both, then this irreverent, little book will make you laugh, nod in agreement, or cry out in protest. You definitely won't be bored. This is Wolf at the top of his game and you'll find yourself constantly reading passages aloud to anyone within earshot.

First published in 1975, Wolf decomposes modern art movements in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining. His clever style provides the reader with an inside look at the art world and illuminates the follies of our cultural elite. Even if you have only a cursory understanding of modern art, Wolf's insightfulness will prompt numerous "oh yeah, now I get it" moments.

The Painted Word will make your next visit to an art museum more discerning and a heck of a lot more fun.
The Shut Mouth Society
The Shopkeeper

A classmate lent me The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe, published in 1975, and boy, if you ever want some actually intelligent criticism and questioning of the establishment of modern art, this is it!

The beauty of this book is that Wolfe doesn't usually attack the art - though occasionally he does accuse artists of allowing themselves to be too influenced by popular theory - he really attacks the establishment.

And he does so in a hilarious way. For instance, Wolfe starts out explaining the "mating ritual" between the bohemian artists, "boho", and high society that can financially back and establish the artist, the "monde". He talks about how to be successful, an artist must first be an honest boho, live amongst the other bohemians and adopt true anti-bourgeois values. This is called the "boho dance". But once an artist has attracted the monde with his dance, he must "doubletrack", which means learn to gleefully hobnob with the elite and enjoy his success, despite being a hypocrite.

And this mating metaphor is just the beginning. This book oozes sarcasm of the best and most vicious sort. Just check out this passage, about how pop art, according to the theorists, was supposed to be about "flatness", rather than how the subject matter related to real life:

"In short... the culturati were secretly enjoying the realism! -plain old bourgeois mass-culture high-school goober-squeezing whitehead-hunting can-I-pop-it-for-you-Billy realism! They looked at a Roy Lichtenstein blowup of a love-comic panel showing a young blond couple with their lips parted in the moment before a profound, tongue-probing, post-teen, American soul kiss, plus the legend `We rose up slowly...as if we didn't belong to the outside world any longer...like swimmers in a shadowy dream...who didn't need to breath...' and--the hell with the sign systems--they just loved the dopey campy picture of these two vapid blond sex buds having their love-comic romance bigger than life, six feet by eight feet, in fact, up on the walls in an art gallery."

How can you not love writing like that?

This book rocks.

A Review of Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word"

Tom Wolfe's rhetoric is at times overpowering but like beautifully complicated music (Bach?) it is a symphony for both the brain and the heart. Wolfe is saying that as art loses its goal to communicate it becomes lousy art, if art at all. He implies that "art for art's sake" is a false concept, and I agree with him. He attacks pretentiousness in both artist and art lover and correctly labels it a game.

Wolfe's title is a word play in two respects. (1) The modernists invent their genres and make them more important that the art itself. (2) Art must have a subject, just as a sentence must have a subject.

The phrase "Art for art's sake" can be used in an adjectival way meaning devotion, obsession, degree of love for the activity of art, and that's fine with me. But there must be more to art than excited devotees. Otherwise, every fanatic, let alone every hard working man who loves his job, would be a creator of art in some form or another. And the crudeness of our world, albeit with beauty scattered about here and there, tells us that is not the case. Of course, beauty and tenderness can exist and not be art. For art does not become art simply because someone says it is.

Much modern art is good and beautiful and meaningful in its dealings with color and form. And a painting might indeed deal solely with color and form, and not with reality. For they are legitimate subjects. On the other hand, an artist's desire to bamboozle is not enough. I love some modern art, and some not, the same as with the other genres. So when is modern art a thing I can accept? When it communicates a subject, even form and color alone; and when it is honest and makes no claims that are not there.

There is a difference between paint-artists and writers in how they perceive their own art juxtaposed others, and how they assign value. Most writers move about, back and forth, and are influenced by all forms, all styles, all of history, and they are capable of learning from the past. They might read Proust one day and Joyce the next, Emily Dickinson and then Virginia Woolf, Goethe and then Vonnegut, Rushdie and then Shakespeare. Take a look at James Joyce's great novel "Ulysses." It depends on the Greek myths, a vastly different kind of writing than his own, but without Homer Joyce's novel would be less than we have now. At the very least, it would be a different novel with a different message.

An exaggeration, even if grotesque, might be characterization, and might be art. James Joyce was aware of that.

On the other hand, more than a few paint artists are bitter in their historical perceptions, hating the art outside their own genre. The Impressionists (whom I especially love) had a vigorous abhorrence for what came before them, and the abstractionists hate everything and everybody but themselves, even denying that their art has to have a subject. "Flatness" is not a subject, it is a technique. A question - why can't I pour paint onto a canvas drip by drip, like Jackson Pollock, and make art out of it? What skill, artistic or otherwise, is involved in that? And what would my spills and splashes communicate?

And then there is the world of hanger-oners and art critics who speak and write in an insane insiders' language, pretentious wanna-be-nabobs living in intellectual temples, wobbly dirty white towers, who feel compelled to tell us what to think, what to love, what to read, what to look at, what to marvel at. And if we disagree they tell us we are bourgeoisie philistines, poor brain and heart limited creatures, incapable.

Tom Wolfe has written a wonderful and humorous look at the sometimes ridiculous world of modern art. Agree with him or not, you will be entertained.

Like Tom Wolfe, I am bemused and irritated by the art reviews in The New York Times. A review of rusted pipes and broken fixtures on display at an art show pushed me over the edge. So I wrote a review of my own and sent it to them. They completely ignored me as I knew they would. My review was of my cat's litter box. Here it is -

**********

A Review of Menace in Simple Things

My love of art and my disdain for the many tortured reviews of art that I stumble across more often than is good for my mental health has led me to write a review of my own. The subject of my analysis is - to say the least - as profound as elephant dung on a Madonna, twisted plumbing, rusting scrap metal, empty white canvasses, or a crucifix inserted into a jar of human urine, objects that are taken quite seriously on the daily art pages of our great American newspapers and in their Sunday supplements. But please, do not take my subject too seriously, for my cat does enough of that for all of us.

A few days ago I happened upon my cat just as he was leaving his litter box after taking a poop. A friend was with me and as he observed my interest in the affair he asked, "You act as though you know what this is all about. I don't get it." Sensing a crisis I suggested that a search through Britannica or The New York Times Arts and Leisure Section might be helpful.

"I can do that." he said, and abruptly left me to my musings. It seemed threatening that I found myself alone with my cat's poop.

The poop seemed to be arranged in a stripped-down manner that made it appear to be on a lighted stage that integrated its various themes into an art form - if you will - that has its roots in Minimalism, and that merged the entire piece into a distinct theatricality. It seemed to have its sources in childhood, a numinous presence having the effect of a domestic twilight zone. Ordinary chunky things were combined in weird ways.

The result was a spooky, dead narrative, perhaps even an autobiographical content. Domesticity - poisoned, entrapped disrupted - was its main theme. And no artist better captured a sense of Foucault's romance with oppression than my cat. At the same time, there was room in the poop for humor, however sardonic, and a strain of poetry that would become more evident with time.

All these morphological riffs loosened up the obtuse, adamant solidity of the poop and suggested a wealth of associations - baptism, slaking thirst, warming, cooling, healing, and of precious things gone down the drain and lost.

It is important to understand the metaphorical dimensions of my cat's poop. But it is not always easy to do that. As time goes on, and the cultural climate that produced this poop moves backward, a new and grand brew of pessimism and nostalgia delivers a shock. But can it be - will it be - a heavy-handed emphasis on a more flexible medium?

Perhaps baby poop next time.

**********

I think I'll go to Macy's and buy me a white suit.

Joseph A. Psarto
440-835-5179
jpsarto@juno.com

Tom Wolfe, that most trenchant of all observers of contemporary American society, turns his gaze to the world of painting and drawing during the first seventy-five years or so of the twentieth century in this book, published in 1975.

Just about anybody with eyes has, I think, wondered by what criterion a good deal of the painting during this period can be considered art. Few of us, however, have Wolfe's command of language to explain the complete vapidity of the work produced during the period that he covers, nor the ability, nearly unique to Wolfe, of allowing artists, critics, and theorists' own words to expose that vapidity.

This is indeed a refreshing work, and written with Wolfe's usual mastery.

This book provides a humorous, easy to read look at the world of modern art. It was a pleasure to read!

If your interest is writing or art, you'll enjoy The Painted Word by Tom Wolf. If you like both, then this irreverent, little book will make you laugh, nod in agreement, or cry out in protest. You definitely won't be bored. This is Wolf at the top of his game and you'll find yourself constantly reading passages aloud to anyone within earshot.

First published in 1975, Wolf decomposes modern art movements in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining. His clever style provides the reader with an inside look at the art world and illuminates the follies of our cultural elite. Even if you have only a cursory understanding of modern art, Wolf's insightfulness will prompt numerous "oh yeah, now I get it" moments.

The Painted Word will make your next visit to an art museum more discerning and a heck of a lot more fun.
The Shut Mouth Society
The Shopkeeper

A classmate lent me The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe, published in 1975, and boy, if you ever want some actually intelligent criticism and questioning of the establishment of modern art, this is it!

The beauty of this book is that Wolfe doesn't usually attack the art - though occasionally he does accuse artists of allowing themselves to be too influenced by popular theory - he really attacks the establishment.

And he does so in a hilarious way. For instance, Wolfe starts out explaining the "mating ritual" between the bohemian artists, "boho", and high society that can financially back and establish the artist, the "monde". He talks about how to be successful, an artist must first be an honest boho, live amongst the other bohemians and adopt true anti-bourgeois values. This is called the "boho dance". But once an artist has attracted the monde with his dance, he must "doubletrack", which means learn to gleefully hobnob with the elite and enjoy his success, despite being a hypocrite.

And this mating metaphor is just the beginning. This book oozes sarcasm of the best and most vicious sort. Just check out this passage, about how pop art, according to the theorists, was supposed to be about "flatness", rather than how the subject matter related to real life:

"In short... the culturati were secretly enjoying the realism! -plain old bourgeois mass-culture high-school goober-squeezing whitehead-hunting can-I-pop-it-for-you-Billy realism! They looked at a Roy Lichtenstein blowup of a love-comic panel showing a young blond couple with their lips parted in the moment before a profound, tongue-probing, post-teen, American soul kiss, plus the legend `We rose up slowly...as if we didn't belong to the outside world any longer...like swimmers in a shadowy dream...who didn't need to breath...' and--the hell with the sign systems--they just loved the dopey campy picture of these two vapid blond sex buds having their love-comic romance bigger than life, six feet by eight feet, in fact, up on the walls in an art gallery."

How can you not love writing like that?

This book rocks.

A Review of Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word"

Tom Wolfe's rhetoric is at times overpowering but like beautifully complicated music (Bach?) it is a symphony for both the brain and the heart. Wolfe is saying that as art loses its goal to communicate it becomes lousy art, if art at all. He implies that "art for art's sake" is a false concept, and I agree with him. He attacks pretentiousness in both artist and art lover and correctly labels it a game.

Wolfe's title is a word play in two respects. (1) The modernists invent their genres and make them more important that the art itself. (2) Art must have a subject, just as a sentence must have a subject.

The phrase "Art for art's sake" can be used in an adjectival way meaning devotion, obsession, degree of love for the activity of art, and that's fine with me. But there must be more to art than excited devotees. Otherwise, every fanatic, let alone every hard working man who loves his job, would be a creator of art in some form or another. And the crudeness of our world, albeit with beauty scattered about here and there, tells us that is not the case. Of course, beauty and tenderness can exist and not be art. For art does not become art simply because someone says it is.

Much modern art is good and beautiful and meaningful in its dealings with color and form. And a painting might indeed deal solely with color and form, and not with reality. For they are legitimate subjects. On the other hand, an artist's desire to bamboozle is not enough. I love some modern art, and some not, the same as with the other genres. So when is modern art a thing I can accept? When it communicates a subject, even form and color alone; and when it is honest and makes no claims that are not there.

There is a difference between paint-artists and writers in how they perceive their own art juxtaposed others, and how they assign value. Most writers move about, back and forth, and are influenced by all forms, all styles, all of history, and they are capable of learning from the past. They might read Proust one day and Joyce the next, Emily Dickinson and then Virginia Woolf, Goethe and then Vonnegut, Rushdie and then Shakespeare. Take a look at James Joyce's great novel "Ulysses." It depends on the Greek myths, a vastly different kind of writing than his own, but without Homer Joyce's novel would be less than we have now. At the very least, it would be a different novel with a different message.

An exaggeration, even if grotesque, might be characterization, and might be art. James Joyce was aware of that.

On the other hand, more than a few paint artists are bitter in their historical perceptions, hating the art outside their own genre. The Impressionists (whom I especially love) had a vigorous abhorrence for what came before them, and the abstractionists hate everything and everybody but themselves, even denying that their art has to have a subject. "Flatness" is not a subject, it is a technique. A question - why can't I pour paint onto a canvas drip by drip, like Jackson Pollock, and make art out of it? What skill, artistic or otherwise, is involved in that? And what would my spills and splashes communicate?

And then there is the world of hanger-oners and art critics who speak and write in an insane insiders' language, pretentious wanna-be-nabobs living in intellectual temples, wobbly dirty white towers, who feel compelled to tell us what to think, what to love, what to read, what to look at, what to marvel at. And if we disagree they tell us we are bourgeoisie philistines, poor brain and heart limited creatures, incapable.

Tom Wolfe has written a wonderful and humorous look at the sometimes ridiculous world of modern art. Agree with him or not, you will be entertained.

Like Tom Wolfe, I am bemused and irritated by the art reviews in The New York Times. A review of rusted pipes and broken fixtures on display at an art show pushed me over the edge. So I wrote a review of my own and sent it to them. They completely ignored me as I knew they would. My review was of my cat's litter box. Here it is -

**********

A Review of Menace in Simple Things

My love of art and my disdain for the many tortured reviews of art that I stumble across more often than is good for my mental health has led me to write a review of my own. The subject of my analysis is - to say the least - as profound as elephant dung on a Madonna, twisted plumbing, rusting scrap metal, empty white canvasses, or a crucifix inserted into a jar of human urine, objects that are taken quite seriously on the daily art pages of our great American newspapers and in their Sunday supplements. But please, do not take my subject too seriously, for my cat does enough of that for all of us.

A few days ago I happened upon my cat just as he was leaving his litter box after taking a poop. A friend was with me and as he observed my interest in the affair he asked, "You act as though you know what this is all about. I don't get it." Sensing a crisis I suggested that a search through Britannica or The New York Times Arts and Leisure Section might be helpful.

"I can do that." he said, and abruptly left me to my musings. It seemed threatening that I found myself alone with my cat's poop.

The poop seemed to be arranged in a stripped-down manner that made it appear to be on a lighted stage that integrated its various themes into an art form - if you will - that has its roots in Minimalism, and that merged the entire piece into a distinct theatricality. It seemed to have its sources in childhood, a numinous presence having the effect of a domestic twilight zone. Ordinary chunky things were combined in weird ways.

The result was a spooky, dead narrative, perhaps even an autobiographical content. Domesticity - poisoned, entrapped disrupted - was its main theme. And no artist better captured a sense of Foucault's romance with oppression than my cat. At the same time, there was room in the poop for humor, however sardonic, and a strain of poetry that would become more evident with time.

All these morphological riffs loosened up the obtuse, adamant solidity of the poop and suggested a wealth of associations - baptism, slaking thirst, warming, cooling, healing, and of precious things gone down the drain and lost.

It is important to understand the metaphorical dimensions of my cat's poop. But it is not always easy to do that. As time goes on, and the cultural climate that produced this poop moves backward, a new and grand brew of pessimism and nostalgia delivers a shock. But can it be - will it be - a heavy-handed emphasis on a more flexible medium?

Perhaps baby poop next time.

**********

I think I'll go to Macy's and buy me a white suit.

Joseph A. Psarto
440-835-5179
jpsarto@juno.com

Tom Wolfe, that most trenchant of all observers of contemporary American society, turns his gaze to the world of painting and drawing during the first seventy-five years or so of the twentieth century in this book, published in 1975.

Just about anybody with eyes has, I think, wondered by what criterion a good deal of the painting during this period can be considered art. Few of us, however, have Wolfe's command of language to explain the complete vapidity of the work produced during the period that he covers, nor the ability, nearly unique to Wolfe, of allowing artists, critics, and theorists' own words to expose that vapidity.

This is indeed a refreshing work, and written with Wolfe's usual mastery.

This book provides a humorous, easy to read look at the world of modern art. It was a pleasure to read!

If your interest is writing or art, you'll enjoy The Painted Word by Tom Wolf. If you like both, then this irreverent, little book will make you laugh, nod in agreement, or cry out in protest. You definitely won't be bored. This is Wolf at the top of his game and you'll find yourself constantly reading passages aloud to anyone within earshot.

First published in 1975, Wolf decomposes modern art movements in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining. His clever style provides the reader with an inside look at the art world and illuminates the follies of our cultural elite. Even if you have only a cursory understanding of modern art, Wolf's insightfulness will prompt numerous "oh yeah, now I get it" moments.

The Painted Word will make your next visit to an art museum more discerning and a heck of a lot more fun.
The Shut Mouth Society
The Shopkeeper

A classmate lent me The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe, published in 1975, and boy, if you ever want some actually intelligent criticism and questioning of the establishment of modern art, this is it!

The beauty of this book is that Wolfe doesn't usually attack the art - though occasionally he does accuse artists of allowing themselves to be too influenced by popular theory - he really attacks the establishment.

And he does so in a hilarious way. For instance, Wolfe starts out explaining the "mating ritual" between the bohemian artists, "boho", and high society that can financially back and establish the artist, the "monde". He talks about how to be successful, an artist must first be an honest boho, live amongst the other bohemians and adopt true anti-bourgeois values. This is called the "boho dance". But once an artist has attracted the monde with his dance, he must "doubletrack", which means learn to gleefully hobnob with the elite and enjoy his success, despite being a hypocrite.

And this mating metaphor is just the beginning. This book oozes sarcasm of the best and most vicious sort. Just check out this passage, about how pop art, according to the theorists, was supposed to be about "flatness", rather than how the subject matter related to real life:

"In short... the culturati were secretly enjoying the realism! -plain old bourgeois mass-culture high-school goober-squeezing whitehead-hunting can-I-pop-it-for-you-Billy realism! They looked at a Roy Lichtenstein blowup of a love-comic panel showing a young blond couple with their lips parted in the moment before a profound, tongue-probing, post-teen, American soul kiss, plus the legend `We rose up slowly...as if we didn't belong to the outside world any longer...like swimmers in a shadowy dream...who didn't need to breath...' and--the hell with the sign systems--they just loved the dopey campy picture of these two vapid blond sex buds having their love-comic romance bigger than life, six feet by eight feet, in fact, up on the walls in an art gallery."

How can you not love writing like that?

This book rocks.

A Review of Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word"

Tom Wolfe's rhetoric is at times overpowering but like beautifully complicated music (Bach?) it is a symphony for both the brain and the heart. Wolfe is saying that as art loses its goal to communicate it becomes lousy art, if art at all. He implies that "art for art's sake" is a false concept, and I agree with him. He attacks pretentiousness in both artist and art lover and correctly labels it a game.

Wolfe's title is a word play in two respects. (1) The modernists invent their genres and make them more important that the art itself. (2) Art must have a subject, just as a sentence must have a subject.

The phrase "Art for art's sake" can be used in an adjectival way meaning devotion, obsession, degree of love for the activity of art, and that's fine with me. But there must be more to art than excited devotees. Otherwise, every fanatic, let alone every hard working man who loves his job, would be a creator of art in some form or another. And the crudeness of our world, albeit with beauty scattered about here and there, tells us that is not the case. Of course, beauty and tenderness can exist and not be art. For art does not become art simply because someone says it is.

Much modern art is good and beautiful and meaningful in its dealings with color and form. And a painting might indeed deal solely with color and form, and not with reality. For they are legitimate subjects. On the other hand, an artist's desire to bamboozle is not enough. I love some modern art, and some not, the same as with the other genres. So when is modern art a thing I can accept? When it communicates a subject, even form and color alone; and when it is honest and makes no claims that are not there.

There is a difference between paint-artists and writers in how they perceive their own art juxtaposed others, and how they assign value. Most writers move about, back and forth, and are influenced by all forms, all styles, all of history, and they are capable of learning from the past. They might read Proust one day and Joyce the next, Emily Dickinson and then Virginia Woolf, Goethe and then Vonnegut, Rushdie and then Shakespeare. Take a look at James Joyce's great novel "Ulysses." It depends on the Greek myths, a vastly different kind of writing than his own, but without Homer Joyce's novel would be less than we have now. At the very least, it would be a different novel with a different message.

An exaggeration, even if grotesque, might be characterization, and might be art. James Joyce was aware of that.

On the other hand, more than a few paint artists are bitter in their historical perceptions, hating the art outside their own genre. The Impressionists (whom I especially love) had a vigorous abhorrence for what came before them, and the abstractionists hate everything and everybody but themselves, even denying that their art has to have a subject. "Flatness" is not a subject, it is a technique. A question - why can't I pour paint onto a canvas drip by drip, like Jackson Pollock, and make art out of it? What skill, artistic or otherwise, is involved in that? And what would my spills and splashes communicate?

And then there is the world of hanger-oners and art critics who speak and write in an insane insiders' language, pretentious wanna-be-nabobs living in intellectual temples, wobbly dirty white towers, who feel compelled to tell us what to think, what to love, what to read, what to look at, what to marvel at. And if we disagree they tell us we are bourgeoisie philistines, poor brain and heart limited creatures, incapable.

Tom Wolfe has written a wonderful and humorous look at the sometimes ridiculous world of modern art. Agree with him or not, you will be entertained.

Like Tom Wolfe, I am bemused and irritated by the art reviews in The New York Times. A review of rusted pipes and broken fixtures on display at an art show pushed me over the edge. So I wrote a review of my own and sent it to them. They completely ignored me as I knew they would. My review was of my cat's litter box. Here it is -

**********

A Review of Menace in Simple Things

My love of art and my disdain for the many tortured reviews of art that I stumble across more often than is good for my mental health has led me to write a review of my own. The subject of my analysis is - to say the least - as profound as elephant dung on a Madonna, twisted plumbing, rusting scrap metal, empty white canvasses, or a crucifix inserted into a jar of human urine, objects that are taken quite seriously on the daily art pages of our great American newspapers and in their Sunday supplements. But please, do not take my subject too seriously, for my cat does enough of that for all of us.

A few days ago I happened upon my cat just as he was leaving his litter box after taking a poop. A friend was with me and as he observed my interest in the affair he asked, "You act as though you know what this is all about. I don't get it." Sensing a crisis I suggested that a search through Britannica or The New York Times Arts and Leisure Section might be helpful.

"I can do that." he said, and abruptly left me to my musings. It seemed threatening that I found myself alone with my cat's poop.

The poop seemed to be arranged in a stripped-down manner that made it appear to be on a lighted stage that integrated its various themes into an art form - if you will - that has its roots in Minimalism, and that merged the entire piece into a distinct theatricality. It seemed to have its sources in childhood, a numinous presence having the effect of a domestic twilight zone. Ordinary chunky things were combined in weird ways.

The result was a spooky, dead narrative, perhaps even an autobiographical content. Domesticity - poisoned, entrapped disrupted - was its main theme. And no artist better captured a sense of Foucault's romance with oppression than my cat. At the same time, there was room in the poop for humor, however sardonic, and a strain of poetry that would become more evident with time.

All these morphological riffs loosened up the obtuse, adamant solidity of the poop and suggested a wealth of associations - baptism, slaking thirst, warming, cooling, healing, and of precious things gone down the drain and lost.

It is important to understand the metaphorical dimensions of my cat's poop. But it is not always easy to do that. As time goes on, and the cultural climate that produced this poop moves backward, a new and grand brew of pessimism and nostalgia delivers a shock. But can it be - will it be - a heavy-handed emphasis on a more flexible medium?

Perhaps baby poop next time.

**********

I think I'll go to Macy's and buy me a white suit.

Joseph A. Psarto
440-835-5179
jpsarto@juno.com

You know, the more I read him, the more I am convinced that Tom Wolfe is the world's greatest living writer. In fact I'm getting to the stage that if he wrote out his back shopping lists and released it on Amazon I'd probably buy it. Is Radical Chic the greatest work under about 60pages in the English language? You'll never think of Leonard Bernsteen (Bern - stein!) again without smirking.......

I can't believe it took me this long to get around to reading this book. Here we see the rich and famous cavorting with violent anti-white, anti-American, and anti-Semitic criminals during the 1960s. It's hard to say who these pampered masochistic high society types hated more; themselves or their own people. Wolfe's recounting of Leonard Bernstein's "ode to the Panthers" party is outstanding. It's great journatlism. Heck, you know a situation is surreal when Barbara Walters is a voice of reason at a social gathering.

As a writer, Wolfe, could not possibly have done a better job. The narrator is everywhere but is not himself a character in the proceedings. He may be a fly on the wall but he is a fly that takes copious notes. The details are magnificent and he has a savant's eye for great quotations. You'll laugh, you'll rage, the limousine liberals and champagne socialists will astound you. The book was written over 30 years ago but it is just as applicable today as one could replace The Black Panthers with a nineties fellon like Mumia Abu Jamal. The section on mau-mauing, or the fine art of the racial shakedown, is totally priceless. It too is as applicable to the present as to the past. Wolfe foreshadows the great future successes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson at coercing cash out of whites who willingly give it away to ease their politically correct minds. A magnificent effort and, at 10 bucks, the price isn't bad--a pity that he didn't write another 200 pages.

I read this years ago and rereading it now I am reminded of what a hilariously funny writer Wolfe is. Wolfe 's description of the super- in-radical chic crowd as they patronize and entertain the guntoting Black Panthers is ferociously clever. Wolfe analyzes what he calls 'nostalgie de boue' the 'nostalgia for the mud' and gives a brief course in the history of High Society in America. The old money always holds its nose as the new money until it it is replaced by it.
Wolfe is especially funny when he takes off on accents. Here is a small sample," Otto Preminger speaks up from the sofa where he's sitting, also just a couple of feet from (Black Panther) Cox. "He used one important word" then he looks at Cox'"you said zis is de most repressive country in de world. I don't beleef zat"
Wolfe gives us a blow- by - blow account of the famous party at the Bernstein's residence.He also tells of the aftemath when Charlotte Curtis gives her New York Times Report and the radical chic crowd is astonished to find themselves abandoned by the key institution of American liberalism, the 'New York Times Editorial Page'.
In the second essay Wolfe goes to the West Coast and describes the white liberal establishment encountering the newly militant minorities angered at the bureaucracy of the poverty program.
This is a funny funny and highly enjoyable book.

Radical Chic is timeless and as relevant today as when Wolfe put his politically incorrect observations down in writing. Wolfe is like a mirror of inescapable truth to those blinded by their sense of personal wisdom and charity.

Mau-Mauing the Flack Catchers captures the tidal pond where government and neighborhood activists interact.

Wolfe has the eye of a reporter mixed with the sense of story to chronicle events in a way that needs little narration.

Both should be required reading in every school of journalism and by every public official in the land.

The cringing white liberal and the self-serving bureaucrat, the sychophantic Jewish silver-spoon socialist and the cunning black race-baiting political opportunist -- these are the types of characters that Tom Wolfe elucidates with wicked satire in his stories, which are a titillating admixture of acid fiction and scathing journalism. The types in this book, moreover, seem to be a fixture of the contemorary world, and their elucidation by Wolfe amounts to a humorous education in past forms. One cannot help but note that militant Islam receives the same perverted reception from several quarters as did the likes of the Black Panther movement of yore.