In Our Time is surely the most inessential Tom Wolfe book. Released in 1980, it’s a grab bag of very short articles and drawings, some of which had already been released in other Wolfe collections. To be cynical, one might think that it was issued purely as a cash grab, riding closely on the coattails of Wolfe’s hugely successful 1979 bestseller The Right Stuff.

The title comes from a column that Wolfe had in Harper’s magazine, which featured drawings by Wolfe and text to accompany them. These are collected in chapter three of the book. I like Wolfe’s drawings in this section the best, as I find them more nuanced than his earlier work.

The first chapter, “Stiffened Giblets,” is the most substantive part of In Our Time, and is very good as a short social history of the 1970’s and why they were such a transformative decade. Wolfe writes about co-ed dorms, marijuana, divorces, and other trends of the ten-year stretch that he so smartly called “the Me Decade.”

The second chapter, entitled “Entr’actes and Canapes” reads like memos Wolfe wrote to himself of ideas for articles that he never found the time or energy to write. As such it’s frustrating at best, as you get little glimpses of Wolfe’s sharp eye, but not the satisfaction that comes from reading his longer pieces. My favorite nugget from this section is Wolfe’s comment about the 1974 movie of The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow: “Nevertheless, Gatsby, followed as it was nearly four years later by Saturday Night Fever, ruined one of the main joys of my life: wearing white suits.” (In Our Time, p.19)

After the “In Our Time” chapter, the rest of the book is filled with Wolfe’s drawings, and precious little of his writing. In these sections of the book, there are drawings recycled from The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Pump House Gang, Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, and The Painted Word. This recycling begs the question, what’s the purpose of In Our Time? It might have made more sense if it were just a collection of Wolfe’s drawings, rather than a bunch of drawings plus a couple of half-baked chapters. It’s just so obviously a literary smorgasbord of whatever he had lying around, plus some stuff that had already been published. Maybe Wolfe cobbled together In Our Time as a diversion while he was planning his first novel.

In Our Time is the one book of Wolfe’s that isn’t even mentioned at all in Conversations with Tom Wolfe. No one ever asked Tom Wolfe about it! No one had any questions about it! It’s surely Wolfe’s most obscure book, and it’s one for the die-hard fans only.

Just a modge-podge of mildly entertaining essays, cartoons, and random drawings.

Not a Tom Wolfe fan but I love the illustrations and stories about "types" of the time.

Tom Wolfe reveals his twisted multifarious talents in more ways than one in this sublimely scathing account of 1970s Americana in all its self-indulgent ruin.

This is quintessential Tom Wolfe. I first came across this book when I was about 9 or 10. I was shopping with my parents one evening, after we'd eaten out and at some bookstore, I happened upon the hardcover edition of this slim volume. What I liked about it - being so young and all - was that there were a lot of slick, funky sketches in this book and also a lot of amusing, drole and quite witty paragraphs here and there under the sketches, not to mention some long-form essays in the front of the book and a couple places in between. I somehow left it behind, probably when I moved from Minneapolis to San Francisco, in Jan, 1996. I sort of forgot about it, although from time to time, it would pop up in my head & I'd think about something extraordinarily funny from the book, like "The Man Who Always Peaked Too Soon" - a hilarious, terse, short narrative, guided by equally hilarious sketches that fleshed out what the narratives described.
Anyway, not long ago, this book came into my mind again, and this time, having a computer on and right in front of me, I instantly went to Amazon and looked it up, found a copy available that was used, in good condition and only 25 cents!!! I couldn't pass that up - and it's worth it - even though, it is a soft-cover edition, not the original hardcover edition which I thought I was getting, for some reason. Anyway, looking through it and re-reading it brought back a lot of good memories.

Mostly meh. Some heh.

Collected social commentary from the 1960's and 1970's. Though more widely known as a novelist, it's clear he was skilled at drawing as well. His humor is hit-or-miss. I wish he had written more in depth about certain topics that he merely mentioned in passing.

Starting with the publication of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in 1973, the repressive nature of socialism as a monolithic system of government became too obvious to ignore any longer. By the 1970s there was no possible detour around concentration camps, and under genuine socialism the concentration camps were found again and again - in the Soviet Union, in Cambodia, in Cuba, in the new united Vietnam.

Among other things Jonestown was an example of a definition well known to sociologists of religion: a cult is a religion with no political power.

The chief lesson of Watergate: the stability of the American political system is profound.

"The Invisible Wife" stands out as worth reading.

Cash grab volume. Fun stuff in it, though

I can see the argument that Wolfe's illustrations (cartoons?) were actually one of his most underrated and interesting forms. They are sometimes strikingly grotesque, and in them you can detect a little more personal distaste with his favorite subject (America and Americans) that comes across in his prose. I can also see the argument that this book would be a great gateway into Wolfe - as a kid when I was bored on afternoons, I would pull books off my dad's bookshelf and browse around looking for "interesting" material. In Our Time would have fit the bill pretty well. (Do any kids still do this, though?)

That said, In Our Time is too fragmentary to recommend to anyone except Wolfe fans - who will read it regardless of its merits.

Wish he would do all the of the decades like this. Especially the early 2000's.

A great social commentator of the kind we see little of now - judgmental without being political, sharply incisive without straw men. Worth reading for the content and the medium.

I am a fan of Wolfe’s works, but this one was not very much worth it. The drawings were fun and I chuckled a few times, but it was two disconnected and probably better for someone who grew up in the 60s/70s who would better appreciate the references.