In Our Time (original) (raw)
257 reviews11 followers
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.
331 reviews1 follower
Wish he would do all the of the decades like this. Especially the early 2000's.
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.
435 reviews7 followers
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.
Author 3 books2 followers
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.
568 reviews1 follower
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.
179 reviews
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.
43 reviews
Just a modge-podge of mildly entertaining essays, cartoons, and random drawings.
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.
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.
4 reviews
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.
Author 27 books13 followers
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.
28 reviews
Not a Tom Wolfe fan but I love the illustrations and stories about "types" of the time.
630 reviews18 followers
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.