[HN Gopher] Tom Wolfe's Irresistible Snap, Crackle and Pop
___________________________________________________________________
Tom Wolfe's Irresistible Snap, Crackle and Pop
Author : Caiero
Score : 18 points
Date : 2024-08-19 05:33 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| https://archive.ph/gVxW8
| woodruffw wrote:
| These two essays in TFA were published in a larger collection[1]
| by Wolfe, which I'd recommend. The essay on Marshall McLuhan in
| particular might be interesting to HN's audience.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pump_House_Gang
| cafard wrote:
| Let's step back a bit. Brooks mentions the Astors, Rockefellers,
| and Whitneys. The founder of the Astor fortunes was a butcher's
| son, and apparently John D. Rockefeller's father was nothing
| special. To quote Mrs. Archer in _The Age of Innocence_
| (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/541/pg541.txt)
|
| """ "Don't tell me," Mrs. Archer would say to her children, "all
| this modern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy. If
| there is one, neither the Mingotts nor the Mansons belong to it;
| no, nor the Newlands or the Chiverses either. Our grandfathers
| and great-grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch
| merchants, who came to the colonies to make their fortune, and
| stayed here because they did so well. One of your great-
| grandfathers signed the Declaration, and another was a general on
| Washington's staff, and received General Burgoyne's sword after
| the battle of Saratoga. These are things to be proud of, but they
| have nothing to do with rank or class. New York has always been a
| commercial community, and there are not more than three families
| in it who can claim an aristocratic origin in the real sense of
| the word." """
|
| And was Leonard Bernstein admired for his taste? I should have
| said it was his conducting and composing. Was Barbara Walters
| admired for her taste, or for ability to interview people of some
| interest?
|
| In general, I reached a point where I really could resist Wolfe's
| effects, where I was tired of the habitual elbow in my ribs. I
| would remark also that according to something posted now and then
| on HN, he got Yeager's crash in _The Right Stuff_ wrong, and
| apparently also the fiasco with Grissom 's capsule. On the other
| hand, Ken Kesey did speak well of him.
|
| [edit: added "also" to the second-last sentence]
| Triphibian wrote:
| I read The Right Stuff recently and it was a pleasure. Very full
| of life and colorful and he really was able to get at what made
| these test pilots and astronauts the tick.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Radical Chic is available as a PDF from NY Magazine:
| https://nymag.com/docs/07/05/070529radical_chic.pdf
|
| It's uncanny to read these in the context of the 2020s and see so
| many parallels.
| hdk wrote:
| Also the full text version https://nymag.com/article/tom-wolfe-
| radical-chic-that-party-...
|
| Even though the ones with the photos look much more
| interesting.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-22 17:01 UTC)