A unique book by Tom Wolfe. Half a collection of short essays, some really more brief observations about the state of the country circa 1980, and also looking back at the years preceding. The other half is cartoons drawn I believe by Tom Wolfe (who knew he could draw) with more observations related to many of the cartoons. Not his best, but as always, his keen eye and ascerbic wit comes through on each page.

A quick read. The best essay captures Wolfe's take on the Seventies: "The first era of every man is an aristocrat. . . . [Hence] the aristocratic luxury: the habit of putting oneself on stage, analyzing one's conduct, one's relationships, hangups, personality. This secret vice was one of the dividends of the feminist movement. An ordinary status -- woman, housewife -- was elevated to the level of drama. One's existence as a woman -- as ME -- became something all the world analyzed, agonized over, drew conclusions from, took seriously. . . . Every woman became a heroine of the great epic of the sexes. Out of such intense concentration upon the self, however, came a feeling that was decidedly religious, binding one beaming righteous soul to the other in the name of the cause. And there you had the paradox of the seventies. It was both the most narcissistic of decades and the least. Such has been the paradox of hedonism for some 2300 years. Epicurus and his disciples developed the proposition that all truth is derived from the senses and the highest truth is derived from pleasure. Yet the pursuit of pleasure, like most monomanias, carries the seeds of spirituality. At the apex of my soul is a spark of the divine and I perceive it in the pure moment of ecstasy which your textbooks call the orgasm, but which I know to be Heaven. . . . Any obsession was sufficient to found a faith upon: jogging, flying, UFOs, ESP, health foods, drug rehab. . . . America now tingles with the things of the flesh while roaring drunk on the things of the spirit. [The Seventies] are a time of devising new values to replace the osteoporotic skeletons of the old. God is dead and forty new gods live."

Of course, Wolfe's tone is snide and his cleverness always colored by condescension, a condescension that seems to arise out of buried insecurities. It's as if he feels vaguely threatened. (For example, on page 31 he assumes joggers are brimming with contempt for the sedentary, their noses smugly in the air as their feet pound the pavement.) He draws Andy Warhol with fiendish detail, turning him into a hideous troll. Yet he looks in the mirror and sees a dashing aristocrat without wrinkles. At such times his biases get in the way and the comedy curdles. Let's just say he admires Duncan Sandys more than Marshall McLuhan, conformists more than bohemians, the rich more than the poor.

Acerbic and classist. I am one of the down jacket wearing proles, so he would have not time for me or my kind. The man could draw.
I will probably read one of his better known works because he is observant and has an interesting turn of phrase and keen, discerning eye.

I think the movie Anchorman was based on Wolfe's sketch on p. 49. It's just a theory.

Tom Wolfe has long been one of my favorite authors. Until I ran across this book in my library today I'd forgotten he also was a published graphic artist. The book is witty and funny. I have no idea if it's still available anywhere. A book by the same title is by Ernest Hemmingway. Don't confuse the two in a search.