About A Man in Full The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt. Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.
And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high. Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious and telling novel America has seen in ages — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date. About A Man in Full The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians.
The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt. Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.
And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high. Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious and telling novel America has seen in ages — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date. From the Trade Paperback edition. Praise #1 New York Times bestseller “A masterpiece.” — The Wall Street Journal “Superior utterly engrossing.” — USA Today “The novel contains passages as powerful and as beautiful as anything written — not merely by contemporary American novelists but by any American novelist.
The book is as funny as anything Wolfe has ever written; at the same time it is also deeply, strangely affecting.” — The New York Times Book Review “Wolfe is a peerless observer, a fearless satirist, a genius in full.” — People Also by Tom Wolfe: The Bonfire of the Vanities The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test From Bauhaus to Our House The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby The Painted Word The Right Stuff Mauve Gloves & Madmen Clutter & Vine In Our Time The Pumphouse Gang Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers Available wherever Bantam Books are sold.
Curious chick spies on a naked old guy and gets violated Passing through the hallway Grace noticed that the bathroom door is open. She peeped inside and saw her old neighbor sitting in the tub. She couldn't tear her eyes from his cock, but he then turned around and noticed her staring at his cock. She tried to run away, but he jumped out of the tub, dragged her inside and began fucking her mouth before switching on to her tight virgin pussy and filling her throat with hot cum. Sexy teen rosebud gets fucked by old boozers Two of Emily's tutors got together after not meeting for over a year and got drunk.
Fuck knows for what reason she happened to be together with them too - sitting in one's lap, feeling something hard rubbing against her firm buns. Suddenly the old guy lifted the hem of her dress and she saw a stiff cock sticking out of his jeans. She screamed and tried to get up, but the second dude grabbed her hands, bent her over the table and forced her to suck, while the first one was savagely bonking her pussy.
Clumsy teen housemaid breaks a cup and gets punished by the horny landlord Linda was sorting out the closet and accidentally broke a cup. She tried to clean out the pieces before the landlord could see it, but he heard the clattering and went to see what she had done this time. He was extremely angry to find out that she had broken his mother's gift, grabbed her by the hair and began slapping her face, but as it seemed not enough for a good punishment, he torn off her clothes and violated her. Sweet virgin beauty gets violated by a merciless old fucker Samuel noticed the bathroom door was slightly cracked open, looked inside and saw this fresh kitty standing in the shower cabin. She was completely naked and her magnificent young body with a couple of firm tits and hairy pussy immediately turned him on.
The temptation was too strong to resist, so he dragged her out of the bathroom, tossed her onto the couch and got down to shagging her virgin pussy having mixed his cum with her pussy juice. Slim brunette gets violently shagged by a lustful old landlord Linda was cleaning windows, when suddenly the owner of the house she was working at came up to her from behind and tossed her onto the bed.
She tried to get up, but he pressed her to the pillow and began tearing off her clothes revealing her seductive body and groaning with lust. She screamed and called for help, but nobody came to save her from getting brutally fucked by the rich bastard Seductive blonde kitty gets banged by a hung old fart Nicole was sitting in front of the mirror doing her hair, when this old seducer approached her from behind and began gently caressing her shoulders slowly moving his hands down to her tits. She felt uncomfortable and tried to turn it into a joke, but he didn't seem to be joking. His hand slid under her shirt and grabbed her tit. Nicole tried to tear from his hands, but he then dragged her to the bed and fucked her mouth and pussy spanking her tender buttocks with his belt.
Fingering chick gets attacked by an old fucker Brooke locked the door and lay on the bed. She wore nothing, but lacy lilac panties. She rubbed her clit and squeezed her nipple moaning with heavenly pleasure that seized her sexy body. She didn 't notice the old voyeur who hid behind the curtains and watched her all the time. She almost reached the orgasm, when he jumped out of his ambush and pounced on her sexy body. Seductive schoolgirl gets abused by a fucked-up grandpa On the weekend, Clarissa went to the countryside to visit the old good friend of her family and decided to stay overnight.
After she finished unpacking her bag, he asked her to lie down on his lap. Clarissa was used to his caresses, but this time she stroke her not like his friend, but like a woman and when she tried to tear from his hands, he torn off her clothes and forced her to please his wrinkled cock with all three of her fuck holes.
Adorable teen rosebud gets all of her tight holes banged real rough Mike entered this yummy girlie's dorm room and stopped at the door admiring her sexy figure from behind. She was sitting on the bed shaving her seductive legs and he could clearly see her adorable ass barely covered with thin red panties. He was unable to restrain his passion any longer and pounced on her tearing off her clothes and fishing out his cock. He banged her pussy and ass and then stuffed his dick into her mouth filling it with loads of hot cum. Sexy slim kitty gets mercilessly banged by an old dude Trisha went to the kitchen and was immediately attacked by her horny aged flatmate who was sitting there. He pressed her to the table running his hands over her sexy firm tits, removed her dress and tossed her to the floor. She begged him to stop and tried to free herself from his grasp, but he firmly pressed her to the floor and began fucking her mouth and rubbing her tight pussy with his middle finger.
She nearly choked with his thick cock running deeply in her throat and shivered with severe pain when he thrust his throbbing shaft into her tight pussy. Busty teen gets drugged with sleeping pills and violated by an old fart Charles and his sexy little girlfriend were going to have tea and when she went out of the kitchen to get some sugar, he dropped several sleeping pills in her cup and quickly stirred them with his spoon. She took her first two sips and began rubbing her eyes and when she finished the cup, he pounced on her and began tearing off her clothes. She was already too weak to resist him and in a couple of minutes she felt his throbbing cock stretching her clean shaved pussy.
Unwilling brunette coed gets shared by two nasty old fuckers Alice was going to wash her pussy, when her aged flatmate went to the bathroom. She stretched her shirt down to her feet and asked him to leave, but he then tossed her to the floor and began pulling off her shirt. She tried to tear away from his grasp, but the violator's buddy, who had just entered the bathroom, helped him to hold her hips while he removed her shirt and then both lechers bonked her pussy and filled her stretched fuck hole with hot cum.
Charming teen coed gets forced to ride a huge cock Leah was washing dishes, when her flat mate entered the kitchen, grabbed a glass of vodka and gripped her by the neck. She tried to break from his hands, but he then forced her to gulp down some vodka, drank it himself and passionately kissed her. She fiercely tried to ward him off, but he lifted up her skirt, spanked her ass cheeks for a while and then tossed her onto the couch and fucked her mouth and pussy torturing her tender body in most brutal ways. Charming blonde coed gets brutally banged by a wasted janitor Pamela was talking on the phone, when this dirty old fuck stormed into the room and pounced on her. He bent her down, lifted up her skirt and began spanking her tender ass cheeks and fucking her throat with his cock.
She begged him to stop, but he then pressed her to the couch and began mercilessly slamming her juicy pussy enjoying her wild screams of pain. Rape Bonus Sites: Fresh Incest Sites: Brutal Incest Bonus Sites: Incest Bonus Sites.
My edition is way older than this, but this was the only one with a picture. The previous owner unfortunately underlined heavily and inserted helpful margin comments throughout ('GREAT!!!!!' I read this book, along with basically the entire Tom Wolfe ouevre (excluding things I had already read or had of yet to be published) my freshman year of college, I decided to re-read it mostly I guess because the title vignette is about La Jolla in the '60s. Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up to re My edition is way older than this, but this was the only one with a picture. The previous owner unfortunately underlined heavily and inserted helpful margin comments throughout ('GREAT!!!!!'
I read this book, along with basically the entire Tom Wolfe ouevre (excluding things I had already read or had of yet to be published) my freshman year of college, I decided to re-read it mostly I guess because the title vignette is about La Jolla in the '60s. Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up to re-reading. Tom Wolfe in the '60s is the Tom Wolfe everyone parodies (excessive onomatopoeia, exclamation points, and lots of 'stiffening giblets' and various things stuffed 'shank to flank'). I was a bit wary (prejudiced), because hunter thompson always talked mad shit about wolfe.called him a shameless phony, etc.maybe h.s.t. Was a little bit threatened by wolfe.
This book documented some interesting social scenes, and (to my pleasant surprise) it was full of muscular, provocative language and imagery. He only occasionally goes out a little too far on the ledge in trying to throw in the 'authentic' slang, which comes across feeling a little forced. Also, i was impressed at his a i was a bit wary (prejudiced), because hunter thompson always talked mad shit about wolfe.called him a shameless phony, etc.maybe h.s.t. Was a little bit threatened by wolfe. This book documented some interesting social scenes, and (to my pleasant surprise) it was full of muscular, provocative language and imagery. He only occasionally goes out a little too far on the ledge in trying to throw in the 'authentic' slang, which comes across feeling a little forced.
Also, i was impressed at his ability to draw parallels between the emerging trends and subcultures to precedents from previous centuries, in foreign countries. He had a more scholarly approach to the social journalism scene, whereas hunter seemed to just prefer to dive right into it and display society through the lens of his own twisted (chemically and socially), anti-authoritative worldview. If wolfe was writing about new marginal subcultures for the mainstream intelligentsia, then hunter was writing for the freaks themselves. But either way, they could both fucking write.
Trying to get in the spirit of visiting Southern California, where I am clearly a stranger in a strange land, I decided to pick up The Pump House Gang at a bookstore in La Jolla, mere steps from where the title essay is set. That essay is not only ingenious but should be (and in many cases, is) required reading for would-be feature writers. There are also brilliant, if now dated, vignettes about the lives of celebrities, like Hugh Hefner and Marshall McLuhan, and the unsung, like two rags-to-rich Trying to get in the spirit of visiting Southern California, where I am clearly a stranger in a strange land, I decided to pick up The Pump House Gang at a bookstore in La Jolla, mere steps from where the title essay is set. That essay is not only ingenious but should be (and in many cases, is) required reading for would-be feature writers. There are also brilliant, if now dated, vignettes about the lives of celebrities, like Hugh Hefner and Marshall McLuhan, and the unsung, like two rags-to-riches pop art dealers in New York and the woman with the biggest breasts in San Francisco. But the momentum I had with this book in California faded when I returned to Dallas, and it took an extra effort during the holiday to finish it.
There are some essays that just don't hold up well over 40 years' time, and some of his stories about '60s London just don't hold much interest. However, a delightful essay called 'The Automated Hotel' about bureaucracy intervening on his stay at the New York Hilton builds the momentum a little more at the end and now is one of my favorite Wolfe pieces. There is an impressive range in this collection of essays, from the early California surf grom scene ('Pump House Gang'), to the pioneers of silicon breast implants in San Francisco ('Put-Together Girl'), to Hugh Heffner's eccentric lifestyle ('King of the Status Dropouts'), to a couple of ascendant art collectors in New York ('Bob and Spike'). All of them published in 1968 at that.
My favorite piece was the last, in which Wolfe walks around New York city with an anthropologist who is interested There is an impressive range in this collection of essays, from the early California surf grom scene ('Pump House Gang'), to the pioneers of silicon breast implants in San Francisco ('Put-Together Girl'), to Hugh Heffner's eccentric lifestyle ('King of the Status Dropouts'), to a couple of ascendant art collectors in New York ('Bob and Spike'). All of them published in 1968 at that. My favorite piece was the last, in which Wolfe walks around New York city with an anthropologist who is interested in the negative impacts of overcrowding on humans ('Behavioral Sink'). He cites studies of animals that show each species has baseline tolerance for crowding, above which individuals become so stressed out that they actually die from adrenal gland problems. Despite Wolfe's tossing around a few sketchy hypotheses, I found it fascinating, and now wonder what more recent research has shown on this.
On the whole, it's classic Wolfe and worth a read. When Tom Wolfe sticks to one subject, like astronauts, he soars. When he puts a collection together, he falls flat on his face. Thus is the case of The Pump House Gang, which is an assortment of articles that is heavily lopsided since it's great at times, and a total bore at others. The biggest problem is that the boring stories far outweigh the interesting ones.
Also, Tom Wolfe's exuberant writing style grows stale over time when there isn't a solid base behind it. I know this book was meant to When Tom Wolfe sticks to one subject, like astronauts, he soars. When he puts a collection together, he falls flat on his face. Thus is the case of The Pump House Gang, which is an assortment of articles that is heavily lopsided since it's great at times, and a total bore at others. The biggest problem is that the boring stories far outweigh the interesting ones. Also, Tom Wolfe's exuberant writing style grows stale over time when there isn't a solid base behind it.
I know this book was meant to show various counter-cultures back in the 1960s, but it mostly doesn't work. I also think Tom Wolfe sounds the most racist in this book than any of his other works. Definitely my least favorite Tom Wolfe book from the ones I've read of his. It was a short read.
But also a slog. It started on the beach. That was where they first saw him. They weren’t quite sure which member of the group had spotted him first, but eventually they became aware of him. This guy just hanging out on the beach with a notebook. And what was he wearing? Dig, man, what kind of crazy trip was he on?
And how old was he? He didn’t look that old, but he just seemed old, you know, like there was no way he would know who the Beach Boys were, or that he could possibly know anything about choppe It started on the beach.
That was where they first saw him. They weren’t quite sure which member of the group had spotted him first, but eventually they became aware of him. This guy just hanging out on the beach with a notebook. And what was he wearing?
Dig, man, what kind of crazy trip was he on? And how old was he? He didn’t look that old, but he just seemed old, you know, like there was no way he would know who the Beach Boys were, or that he could possibly know anything about chopped and channeled woodies. What kind of a nutso getup was he wearing? I mean, fer Chrissake, who in the hell wears a suit to the beach, man? And he asked them all of these really basic questions, it was obvious he had never been surfing.
They had to explain everything to him, which they were only too happy to do. KA-SPLOSH, the surf came roaring in, and it almost gets him wet, and he’s got these white buck shoes on, if he gets those babies wet they are done for, but zoom! He moves back real fast, and doesn’t get a drop on him. Nothing seems to faze this guy, it’s like he’s off on his own out in some other time zone, neither hip nor square, just in his own bag with his own groovy happening going on. He has this soft voice, like he doesn’t want to draw too much attention to himself, despite the Beau Brummell wardrobe. He’s got this real high, cresting forehead, with this mass of hair swooping over from left to right. He pulls out this notebook, this great, hulking green notebook with the spirals at the top, and he starts firing questions, one after the other.
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He’s scribbling furiously, feverishly trying to get it all down on paper as they tell him the dope on their lives. In the Introduction to The Pump House Gang, Tom Wolfe’s second collection of articles, which was released on the same day in 1968 as Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe described taking part in a symposium on “The Style of the Sixties.” The other panelists all seemed quite depressed about the state of the world. When it was Wolfe’s turn to speak, he said “What are you talking about? We’re in the middle of aHappiness Explosion!” (p.9) The other panelists didn’t have the foggiest notion what Wolfe was talking about, but he was right! Sure, things might have seemed like they were going to hell back in the late 1960’s, but middle class Americans suddenly had the leisure time and money to be deliriously happy!
All of the time! And, despite the stagnation in middle class earning power since then, we still have a lot of things that can distract us in 2016! We are doing less and less manual labor-which means more time to tune out the world around us and create our own versions of reality! Wolfe’s real subject of The Pump House Gang is exploring different subcultures and how they define themselves.
In “The Hair Boys,” he writes: “It is not that any of these groups is ever rich. It is just that there is so much money floating around that they can get their hands on enough of it to express themselves, and devote time to expressing themselves, to a degree nobody in their netherworld position could ever do before.” (p.103) There are 15 pieces in The Pump House Gang, and as usual in Wolfe’s collections, many topics are covered. “The Pump House Gang” follows a group of teenage surfers in La Jolla, California. Wolfe describes how these kids have set up their own lifestyle of surfing and hanging out-they’re a prime example of the subcultures he examines throughout the book.
“The Mid-Atlantic Man” is a brilliant piece of reporting about a London advertising man who travels to New York City regularly on business and then finds himself stuck between being English and being American. It’s a piece of Wolfe’s writing that foreshadows what a great fiction writer he would become. It reads like fiction, since you’re inside this guy’s mind, but you know that it’s all true! This piece shows how in tune Wolfe is to differences and gradations in status.
On page 40, we get a mention of Fabrilex, which is the name of a fictitious company that Wolfe has used in other books as well. It shows up at random times; look for it in The Bonfire of the Vanities. “King of the Status Dropouts” is a profile of Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner.
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It’s fascinating stuff, as during this period of time Hefner was holed up in his Chicago mansion, running the Playboy brand and empire entirely from his house! He wasn’t out on the town partying with blonde starlets; he was staying in, dressed in his robe, smoking his pipe, drinking Pepsi-Cola after Pepsi-Cola, and embracing the Sexual Revolution that he had helped to create! One of my favorite anecdotes about Hugh Hefner, dating from this same time period, is about Hefner’s appearance on William F.
Buckley’s television show Firing Line. In his excellent 1971 book Cruising Speed, Buckley related the story of how a friend of his was watching Hefner’s appearance on his show with some guests from France; however, when they tuned in, there was a problem with the sound, so they couldn’t hear what the men were saying. Based solely on their body posture, the French guests surmised that the slouching, grinning Buckley, with his arching eyebrows and darting tongue, must be the publisher of Playboy, and the erect, ramrod-straight Hefner must be the conservative Republican writer and host! In all seriousness, I think Hugh Hefner is quite a remarkable guy, and someone should really write a biography about him, as I think he’s one of the figures most responsible for the sexual revolution in America.
“The Put-Together Girl” chronicles the adventures of Carol Doda, an exotic dancer in San Francisco who was one of the first women in America to get breast implants. “The Noonday Underground” is another piece that Wolfe wrote in London, about teenagers who spend their lunch hours at dingy discotheques listening to mod rock and buying the latest Carnaby Street knockoffs.
Who Wrote The Pump House Gang
“The Mild Ones” is a very short piece about “work-a-daddy citizens” who are also into motorcycles. “The Hair Boys” is about teenage car culture, and it revisits car customizer Ed Roth, one of the subjects of Wolfe’s first ground-breaking essay, “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.” “What if He is Right?” profiles media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who had become an unlikely mid-1960’s celebrity.
It’s an interesting piece, opening with Wolfe staring at, and becoming obsessed with, McLuhan’s clip-on necktie. “Bob and Spike” dives into the New York City art world of the mid-1960’s, as seen through the eyes of Robert and Ethel Scull, two of the most prominent collectors of that time. Ethel was the subject of Andy Warhol’s wonderful 1963 portrait, Ethel Scull 36 Times. There’s a marvelous description of a party that the Sculls gave at the Top o’ the Fair restaurant in Flushing, which was built for the 1964-5 World’s Fair.
The restaurant is still there, now called “Terrace on the Park.” “Tom Wolfe’s New Book of Etiquette” is the funniest piece in the book. It features Wolfe’s views on cocktail parties, and the rapidly changing social mores of the 1960’s. Among other fascinating tidbits, you’ll learn that “Socially, New York today is highly redolent of London during the Regency period (roughly, 1800 to 1830).” (p.169) “The Life & Hard Times of a Teenage London Society Girl” is another piece from London where Wolfe does some great reporting and gets into the mind of, well, a teenage London society girl. “The Private Game” is yet another dispatch from London, this time about private gambling clubs that had proliferated after the legalization of gambling in England. “The Automated Hotel” is one of the few non-fiction pieces in which the focus is squarely on Tom Wolfe.
Wolfe is the protagonist of this piece, and he has some very harsh words for the then newly opened New York Hilton Hotel, where he checked in while trying to avoid distractions and finish several magazine articles. “The Shockkkkkk of Recognition” follows movie star Natalie Wood as she visits New York City in April of 1966 to tape an episode of What’s My Line? And to possibly buy some paintings. Wolfe gets to observe Wood at an art dealer where she looks at a variety of paintings.
Had I been a dashing young New Journalist working for the New York World Journal Tribune in 1966, I would have gladly accepted this assignment! I also would have accepted the assignment, “watch Natalie Wood watch paint dry.” The day before Wood taped the episode of What’s My Line?
She was in Boston at Harvard University accepting an award from the Harvard Lampoon for the “Worst Actress of the Year.” No one accepted sarcastic awards like that in person, but Wood confounded her critics by showing up. Of course, she stole the show, treating the event like she had won the Oscar. Natalie Wood was very funny on What's My Line? As she tries to stump the panel by adopting a Russian accent, and she completely throws panelist Arlene Francis for a loop when Francis asks her, “Are you something other than American?” Wood replies, “Well, in my mind.” “O Rotten Gotham-Sliding Down into the Behavioral Sink” explains the ideas of anthropologist Edward T. Hall, who theorized that life in New York City was getting worse because of overcrowding.
It’s an interesting theory, and I wonder what Hall would have to say about overcrowding in cities now, fifty years later. As noted above, The Pump House Gang was released on the same day in 1968 as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
While The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test has gone on to assume classic status and is one of Wolfe’s most famous books, The Pump House Gang remains more obscure. It’s probably inevitable that collections of non-fiction articles are rarely ever the most famous works of authors, but despite the fact that it might not be well known today, The Pump House Gang, like its predecessor The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, was a very steady seller. The copy of The Pump House Gang that I own is the 13th paperback printing, from November of 1980.
The Pump House Gang went through four paperback printings in 1970 alone, so I’d say it was pretty successful for Tom Wolfe. It’s a fine example of his exhilarating writing style, and his sharp observations on contemporary culture.
Placing Tom Wolfe's The Pump House Gang within the context of its time is both challenging and rewarding. This collection of essays, published in book form in 1968 after virtually all of the essays had appeared in publications like New York or the London Weekend Telegraph between 1964 and 1966, beckons to us from a time that is as long-ago for us as World War I was for Wolfe's original 1960's readers. The original circumstances of the publication of these essays - Sunday-magazine supplements fo Placing Tom Wolfe's The Pump House Gang within the context of its time is both challenging and rewarding. This collection of essays, published in book form in 1968 after virtually all of the essays had appeared in publications like New York or the London Weekend Telegraph between 1964 and 1966, beckons to us from a time that is as long-ago for us as World War I was for Wolfe's original 1960's readers. The original circumstances of the publication of these essays - Sunday-magazine supplements for major-city newspapers - mean that Wolfe, as he jet-sets back and forth between Swinging London and turbulent '60's New York, is looking for interesting and unusual stories of quirky people doing attention-getting things.
These were originally stories that were meant to be read by busy urbanites seeking a bit of weekend diversion from their hectic lives, and that fact imposes its limitations on the work collected in The Pump House Gang; but Wolfe's gifts for mercilessly accurate observation, and for devastatingly adroit turns of phrase, nonetheless emerge throughout. Of the fifteen essays included in this collection, the title essay, 'The Pump House Gang,' is probably the most uncharacteristic. This vignette about a group of youthful surfers who hang out at beachside, hard by a pump house for the La Jolla, California, water system, captures its San Diego-area setting so vividly that it is cited by many San Diego travel books as a good book to read when one is travelling there; but be advised, if you are San Diego-bound, that this 21-page essay is the only part of Wolfe's 309-page book that has anything to do with San Diego. Most of the rest go back and forth between New York and London with Concorde-like speed, as Wolfe works to introduce us to the strangeness transpiring on both sides of the pond.
'The Mid-Atlantic Man' has nothing to do with the region of the United States that is usually defined as stretching from New York to Washington, D.C.; rather, it explores the phenomenon by which British businessmen working in the United States, and American businessmen working in the United Kingdom, both start taking on aspects of their respective host cultures. 'King of the Status Dropouts' is an extended interview with Hugh Hefner, cloistered in the seclusion of his high-tech Chicago mansion. 'The Put-Together Girl' tells the story of a San Francisco exotic dancer who has received silicone shots to increase the size of her bustline - at that time, a relatively new procedure. 'The Noonday Underground' gives us the chance to travel along with young work-a-day Londoners as they escape the drudgery of their low-wage, low-status jobs for some lunch-hour clubbing. 'The Mild Ones' captures the lives of Harley-Davidson motorcycle enthusiasts in Columbus, Ohio, and 'The Hair Boys' takes us to a Los Angeles drive-in where the proponents of L.A. Car culture spend at least much time on the stylized clothes they wear as on the cars they drive. 'Bob and Spike' explores the trials and triumphs of New York art collectors who seek to move up into the elite of Gotham's art world.
'Tom Wolfe's New Book of Etiquette' reminds us that there was once a time when the publishing of curse words, even within an essay that deals with changing social mores, once would have seemed daring. 'The Life & Hard Times of a Teenage London Society Girl' emphasizes how, when one sets aside the Mod fashions and the electrified '60's music, the lives of young women in the London of the time are marked by the same class divisions that defined life in past centuries. 'The Private Game' introduces us to a traveling illegal-gambling enterprise that did a thriving business in various London flats, even though there were plenty of places where one could gamble legally.
The humor of 'The Automated Hotel' seems forced, as Wolfe chronicles his misadventures dealing with the then-high-tech conveniences of the New York Hilton Hotel. And with 'The Shockkkkkk of Recognition' (I'm not exactly sure why Wolfe felt the need to type the letter 'k' six times), we travel along with film star Natalie Wood as she eludes paparazzi and shops for great art at a high-end New York gallery. Stylistically, the essays in The Pump House Gang very much partake of the conventions of the New Journalism movement that was popular at the time. In an effort to capture the dynamism of 1960's life, the New Journalists utilized many unconventional techniques - from long passages in italics for no apparent reason, to onomatopoeic presentation of sounds like thragggggh or rrr.rrr.rrr., to CAPITALIZATION THAT MAKES IT FEEL AS THOUGH THE AUTHOR IS YELLING AT YOU, to racial and ethnic slurs that seem to be thrown in simply for the sake of gratituous shock value, to ellipses.and more ellipses.and still more ellipses.to dashes - that are followed by dashes - until one feels all dashed out. And then there are the stylistic flashes that are frankly unexplainable, as in 'What If He Is Right?' , an essay about the popularity and influence of media critic Marshall McLuhan, when Wolfe writes, 'What if he's right What.if.he.is.right W-h-a-t i-f h-e i-s r-i-g-h-t' (p.
In 1968, no doubt all this stylistic innovation seemed new. It no longer does. Sadly, the fate of anything that is called New is that it will eventually become Old. Just as so much of the New Wave music of the 1980's has taken on an Old Wave sound, so has the New Journalism of the 1960's aged, and not aged well. I am also a bit troubled by Wolfe's implied attitude toward his subjects. Much of his early writing took on an unpleasantly superior tone toward his subjects; it's as if the man walked up to interviewees and said, 'Hi, I'm Tom Wolfe and I'm here to anatomize your flaws for the benefit of coastal sophisticates.' The only wonder is that, when people saw the man from Richmond, Virginia, walking up to them in his white suit, they didn't just turn and run screaming.
Then all Wolfe could have smugly pooh-poohed is the manner in which his prospective subjects turned and ran screaming. And yet the thoughtful and perceptive work of which Wolfe is capable shows through in the collection's final essay, 'O Rotten Gotham - Sliding Down Into the Behavioral Sink.' In this essay, Wolfe follows anthropologist Edward T. Hall of the Illinois Institute of Technology with interest and respect, rather than with his usual dismissive attitude, as Hall persuasively explains how the overcrowding that New Yorkers accept as part of their lives, at Grand Central Station and aboard subway trains and in overcrowded apartments, virtually guarantees stress and illness and increases the likelihood of violence.
The Pump House Gang By Tom Wolfe
It is a gem of an essay, and by far the best essay in the collection. I'm not sure of the extent to which the essays can be said to be unified. In the introduction, Wolfe claims that all of the essays share the theme of people isolating themselves in 'statuspheres' (p.
I'm not sure I buy that. But the essays all make for interesting reading, and put one back in those turbulent days of the 1960's. You may like The Pump House Gang, you may hate it, but I'm pretty sure you won't be bored.
I expected to like this a lot more than I did. Most of the time I couldn't stand Wolfe's writing style- it just felt really forced (and dated, but that's to be expected). When you read HST, he sounds like the lunatic you know he was. When you read Talese, he writes straight but incorporates literary techniques into his nonfiction. He just sounds like a cop. Like, he writes as if he was in the middle of the action but if this dude was hanging around the party he'd be in the corn hrm. I expected to like this a lot more than I did.
Most of the time I couldn't stand Wolfe's writing style- it just felt really forced (and dated, but that's to be expected). When you read HST, he sounds like the lunatic you know he was. When you read Talese, he writes straight but incorporates literary techniques into his nonfiction. He just sounds like a cop. Like, he writes as if he was in the middle of the action but if this dude was hanging around the party he'd be in the corner with a weird moustache and no one would trust him. At least that's the feeling I got from how this is written.
It's a shame because there were a few pretty interesting topics. Also some really uninteresting ones I had no interest in. For all his semi-snark at the WASPy establishment, he's very clearly a part of it. Wolfe was educated at Washington and Lee Universities and also at Yale, where he received a PhD in American studies. Tom Wolfe spent his early days as a Washington Post beat reporter, where his free-association, onomatopoetic style would later become the trademark of New Journalism. In books such as The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe delves into Wolfe was educated at Washington and Lee Universities and also at Yale, where he received a PhD in American studies. Tom Wolfe spent his early days as a Washington Post beat reporter, where his free-association, onomatopoetic style would later become the trademark of New Journalism.
In books such as The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe delves into the inner workings of the mind, writing about the unconscious decisions people make in their lives. His attention to eccentricities of human behavior and language and to questions of social status are considered unparalleled in the American literary canon. He is one of the founders of the movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Tom Wolfe is also famous for coining and defining the term.
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The New York Times Books 'The Pump House Gang' and 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' NYTimes: -Site Search: 'The Pump House Gang' and 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' Reviewed by C. BRYAN Published: August 18, 1968 ARTICLE TOOLS Printer-Friendly Format THE PUMP HOUSE GANG By Tom Wolfe.
THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST By Tom Wolfe. TIMES NEWS TRACKER Topics Alerts Track news that interests you.
Om Wolfe's first book, 'The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby' was a success when it was published in 1965, not so much because of what he said about publicity-seeking social climbers, stock-car racing drivers, teen-recording entrepreneurs and lonely divorcee mothers intimidated by the 'Nanny Mafia,' but how he said it. Wolfe's style of journalism was something new, entirely his own, as young and exuberant and frenzied as the period he was depicting.
He intimately knew and wrote about what was happening-not just now, but NOW!, with an explosion of asterisks, exclamation points, italics and puppyish enthusiasm. So what if occasionally he seemed almost to parody himself? When Wolfe was good, he was very, very good.but when he was bad he took on The New Yorker in a two-part article for Clay Felker's New York Sunday magazine supplement of The Herald-Tribune.
And, oh God, the arteriosclerotic old boys, as Wolfe would call them, slapped his wrists right up to his epiglottis-not so much because his New Yorker article was filled with gross inaccuracies (which it was), but because he had been rude (which he had been). Now, Tom Wolfe has published two books the same day.
Two books:::::- heeeeeewack-The same day!!!!! Too-o-o-o-o-o-o freaking MUCH! 'The Pump House Gang,' like 'The Kandy-Kolored etcetera,' is a collection of short, intimately subjective pieces about publicity-seeking social climbers, California surfing entrepreneurs, motorcycle racers, lonely London socialites and Eastern businessmen intimidated by the Not Our Class, Dear, Mafia. Wolfe's style is a little more subdued. He is a little older, and a lot more compassionate. There is still a lingering rhetorical 'so what?'
That one asks oneself after reading some of the pieces, simply because, no matter how fresh a treatment an unrefreshing subject is given, one still remains bored. Teen-age California surfers are bores, really. Playboy's Hugh Hefner is a bore, really.
The New York Hilton is a bore, really. Actress Natalie Wood is a-well, her taste in art is a bore, really. And yet, Tom Wolfe manages somehow to imbue them all with a semblance of life, no matter how depressing they may seem.
The best piece in this collection is 'Bob and Spike,' Wolfe's portrait of Robert and Ethel Scull. Superficially, it is a devastating caricature of New York society and its art world; actually, Wolfe has written a perceptive (and, at times, quite moving) story about two people in love with each other and Society. Wolfe, in his introduction, compared Hefner to Fitzgerald's Gatsby. Scull (a taxicab fleet owner cum Pop Art taste and Aristotelian ambitions) would have seemed the more striking comparison. Although Wolfe points out that others might snigger at the Sculls' social aspirations, he does not. With a great deal of compassion he has skillfully drawn the portrait of an absolutely contemporary New York couple.
So what if they're not entirely likable? They have moxie and style-and one ultimately feels the same sort of affection for them that one feels, say, for the New York Mets. Unfortunately, however, 'The Pump House Gang' isn't really much more than a remake, a 'Son of Kandy-Kolored.'
It's good enough, but not in the same league as 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,' which is why I suppose he had it published on the same day, almost as if he, himself, looked upon it as a throwaway. 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' is an astonishing book. It is to the hippie movement what Norman Mailer's 'The Armies of the Night' was to the Vietnam protest movement. Mailer was precisely the right author to capture the essence of those two days last October, when students, academic liberals, the intellectual New Left, the militants and nonmilitants and the marching mothers confronted the American Nazis, the Federal marshals and the United States Army on the steps of the Pentagon.
Wolfe is precisely the right author to chronicle the transformation of Ken Kesey from respected author of 'And One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' to an LSD enthusiast, to the messianic leader of a mystical band of Merry Pranksters, to a fugitive from the F.B.I., California police and Mexican Federales. 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' is a celebration of psychedelia, of all its sounds and costumes, colors and fantasies. Wolfe, like Mailer, participates instead of merely reporting. Wolfe, like Mailer, makes no pretense of being objective. And it is Wolfe's involvement, as it was Mailer's involvement, that makes his book so successful, just as (inexorably) such involvement created some flaws.
At times, Wolfe seems to be as indiscriminate an observer as a wide-angle camera panning back and forth across crowded rooms. At times, he dollies in for closeups of characters or incidents whose significance is never determined. And at other times he piles elaboration upon elaboration until reality is buried under illusions of evaluation. It is Wolfe's enthusiasm and literary fireworks that make it difficult for the reader to remain detached. He does not hesitate to tell us what to think, how to react, even what to wear as he wings us along with Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters in a brightly painted, Ampex-loaded cross-country bus. Or on a weekend romp with the Hell's Angels. Or at a successful taking-over and turning-on of a Unitarian church convention.
Or into the unintended debacle Kesey's Pranksters made of a protest rally, before they went into hiding in Mexico. Wolfe has written a marvelous book about a man I suspect is not so marvelous; and my reservations about his book stem from my feeling that some of Kesey's dazzle-dust still lingers in Wolfe's eyes.
Kesey's Commandment was that one must go beyond LSD, 'graduate from acid,' as he proclaimed over and over again. But Kesey never seemed able to, and never will be able to until he can graduate from his awesome sense of self-importance.
Kesey never was advanced as far as another and younger apprentice mystic, Franny Glass, who 11 years ago was 'sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's.' Kesey comes across in this book as a man inordinately aware of his own heroic potential. (So did Mailer, in 'Armies of the Night,' but he had a sense of humor about himself which one sorely misses in Kesey.) Wolfe wrote in his Author's Note, 'For all the Pranksters, as I have attempted to show, the events described in this book were both a group adventure and a personal exploration.
Many achieved great insight on both levels.' We-e-e-e-ll, I'm not so convinced about that. I would have liked to find in the book some evidence of their attempts to articulate those great insights, the new knowledge they gained of themselves which they didn't have before. I accept that they achieved more self-confidence, but insights.? What happens often with LSD (and what, I suspect, happened with Kesey and the Merry Pranksters) is that one dominant member of the group provides or insinuates or directs all of the insights and, of course, they are his. The others accept them, absorb them as if by osmosis, digest them, but these insights don't-really-have-any-meaning. One must go beyond acid.
Yes, well. Throughout 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,' Wolfe refers to dropping acid as the experience'; and no matter what one says pro or con LSD, it is a profound experience. And this, I think, is why Wolfe's book is so significant: it accurately and absolutely depicts the change that has occurred in the ethics of the American young, whose contemporary morality is based upon esthetic rather than social values. If it's beautiful, do it. The Protestant Ethic (work is the way to salvation and wordly achievement a sign of God's favor, to which one adds a pinch of forsake pleasure now for deeper and greater satisfaction later) is being replaced by the fundamental value of the immediate, direct experience, the Pleasure Now principle. Drugs do provided the immediate, direct experience, the Instant Profundity, witness Kesey and his Merry Pranksters; but one finds it difficult to accept Kesey as a leader, mystic or otherwise, after he permitted the Electric Kool-Aid to be served at the Watts Acid Test, where many people drank it unaware the Kool-Aid was heavily laced with LSD.
That's playing God with people's minds and nobody, nobody has the right to do that. If there ever was an opportunity for Wolfe to draw some objective conclusions about Kesey, that was the moment Wolfe chose not to.
He never looked back, but instead continued to describe the activities of the band of Merry Pranksters as if to suggest it was all in good fun. A lot of the book is good fun. It is an astonishing, enlightening, at times baffling, and explosively funny book. 'The Pump House Gang' is illustrated adequately by the author; 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' is not illustrated. Instead, Wolfe has slipped in some of his poetry. Which reveals how his style has been influenced by Influenced.
Edgar Allan Poe and Rudyard Kipling and a host of anonymous limerick authors. Kipling::::: Huhhhhhhhhhnnnnnhhh Ulalume. About that poetry: Nevermore. OUR ADVERTISERS.