The Pump House Gang (original) (raw)
635 reviews122 followers
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 1960's New York City, 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 quite vividly. The young surfers hang out "by the Pump House itself, a concrete block, 15 feet high, full of machinery for the La Jolla water system" (p. 21), and the older and affluent permanent residents of the "fairly posh resort community" of La Jolla keep their distance:
This beach is verboten for people practically 50 years old. This is a segregated beach. They can look down on Windansea Beach and see nothing but lean tan kids. It is posted "no swimming" (for safety reasons), meaning surfing only. In effect, it is segregated by age. From Los Angeles on down the California coast, this is an era of age segregation....[I]n California today, surfers, not to mention rock 'n' roll kids and the hot-rodders or Hair Boys, named for their fanciful pompadours -- all sorts of sets of kids -- they don't merely hang around together. They establish whole little societies for themselves. (p. 22)
Indeed, Wolfe's portrait of La Jolla is so devastatingly accurate that it is cited by many San Diego travel guides as a good book to read when one is travelling there; but be advised, if you are San Diego-bound (as I was when I first took up The Pump House Gang), 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.
Other highlights of the Pump House Gang collection, for me, included "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 socializing in an underground club, where an observer might find them dancing wildly,
...down in the cellar at noon. Two hundred and fifty office boys, office girls, department store clerks, messengers, members of London's vast child work-force of teenagers who leave school at 15, pour down into this cellar, Tiles, in the middle of the day for a break...back into The Life. The man on the stage playing the records is Clem Dalton, a disk jockey. Off to one side in the dimness is a soft-drink stand, a beauty parlor called Face Place and an arcade of boutiques, a Ravel shoe store, a record shop, a couple of other places, all known as Tiles Street. There is a sign out there in the arcade that says Tiles Street, W1. The place is set up as an underground city for The Life. (p. 101)
"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. Stating that norms for etiquette have been transformed by "The rationalization of politesse; i.e., the adapting of social etiquette to purely business ends", and by "Nostalgie de la boue; i.e., the adoption by the upper orders, for special effect, of the customs of the lower orders" (p. 207), Wolfe slyly suggests that new headings for the New Book of Etiquette should include "The Social Kiss", "The Etiquette of Pot", and "Shit! Fuck! and Other Polite Interjections" (p. 208). Today, we live in an era when the curse words mentioned above don't even necessarily ensure a movie an "R" rating, and when marijuana is sold legally in a growing number of states. If Wolfe included this content in order to shock us, it no longer does.
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. 138). Hello?
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 the New Journalism of the 1960's has aged, and has 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 Dr. 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. Pointing out that, at that time, ulcers were already acknowledged and accepted as a disease of big-city life, Wolfe shows how ulcerization is as much a symptom of something larger as it is a disease unto itself:
[O]vercrowding, as Dr. Hall sees it, raises a lot more hell with the body than just ulcers. In everyday life in New York -- just the usual, getting to work, working in massively congested areas like 42nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Lexington...working in cubicles with low ceilings and, often, no access to a window...then rushing to get home, piling into subways and trains, fighting for space, the usual day in New York -- the whole now-normal thing keeps shooting jolts of adrenalin into the body, breaking down the body's defenses and winding up with the work-a-daddy human animal stroked out at the breakfast table...signing off with the black thrombosis, cancer, kidney, liver, or stomach failure, and the adrenals ooze to a halt, the size of eggplants in July. (pp. 301-02)
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. 7). 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.
Author 6 books60 followers
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.
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.
211 reviews26 followers
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").
cultural-studies non-fiction short-stories
Author 16 books144 followers
My favorite Tom Wolfe book. Selected subjects include pieces on West Coast surfers, British mods (Noonday Underground), Hugh Hefner, weekend bikers, stripper Carol Doda, Marshall McLuhan and more demented Wolfe sketches that predate old Ralph Steadman by a hoot-owl's age. Highly recommended.
795 reviews
Not quite sure what it is about Tom Wolfe, but his style is like strangling yourself. I think his writing style is really one of the worst I have ever encountered.
183 reviews7 followers
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.
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.
528 reviews20 followers
this essay collection is excellent, covering figures who have achieved status levels outside of the mainstream social hierarchy. his subjects are rascally surfer kids, strippers, and the O.G. of creepy old men, hugh hefner. i think tom wolfe is getting pretty annoying in his old age, but this (written shortly after kool-aid) is one of his finest, in my opinion.
17 reviews30 followers
A wide-ranging collection of essays, almost all written within a 12-month period.
Many germinal ideas here which crop up with greater depth in more focused books from Wolfe, so apparently he had fondness enough for the content to use it as an outline for works to be published later.
112 reviews14 followers
Yes, but the copy I'm reading is an old paperback with a cover so pink it leaves permanent scars on your cornea.
But of course! It's--Tom--WOLFE!!!
Halfway through, I'm wondering what McLuhan would have made of the Internet.
1,069 reviews31 followers
I thought I was going to wet myself laughing at this book. Even so, it is a most interesting look at American culture in the 60's. I should re-read Wolfe's stuff to see if it has dated.
16 reviews4 followers
This was a real treat.
Surfer youth in La Jolla,
Hugh Hefner's strange living,
Topless waitresses,
and...hey waita minute...
oh yeah, that was in this one.
31 reviews1 follower
dissapointing... either Wolfe is a dick or the old windnsea guys were racists; probably both.
144 reviews
Articles culled from Tom's magazine writing career back in the Sixties. Well done but, obviously, dated.
1,247 reviews28 followers
More social history from the man in the white suit.
108 reviews3 followers
Mystery solved: youth is fleeting.
257 reviews11 followers
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? A suit? 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. 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 a…Happiness 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! iPhones! Computers! Kindles! Spotify! Netflix! 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. 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.
“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.
16 reviews
My favorite chapter, "What If He Is Right?," is dedicated to the writings and influence of Marshall McLuhan. So I'll share some of the insights that Wolfe provided for his readers regarding this important figure in the study of mediated reality.
A brief bio via Wiki:
"Herbert Marshall McLuhan CC was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge."
"McLuhan coined the expression 'the medium is the message'[12] in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man[13] and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented.[14] He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s.[15] In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles.[16] However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.[17][18][19]"
*****
Wolfe:
"McLuhan is fond of quoting Daniel Boorstin's dictum, 'The celebrity is a person who is known for his wellknownness.' That pretty much describes McLuhan himself. McLuhan is one of those intellectual celebrities, like Toynbee and Einstein, who is intensely well known as a name, and as a savant, while his theory remains a grand blur (118)."
"Television and the electric media generally, says McLuhan...are returning man's sensory ratios to the pre-print, pre-literate, 'tribal' balance. The auditory and tactile senses come back into play, and man begins to use all his senses at once again in a unified, 'seamless web' of experience. The world is becoming a 'global village,' to use one of his happy phrases (119)."
"In the long run, he says, the new neural balance will cause total change in everything anyway: 'Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism. The old civic, state, and national groupings have become unworkable. Nothing can be further from the spirit of the new technology than 'a place for everything and everything in its place.' You can't go home again' (120)."
"Artists...are geniuses who detect the invisible truths intuitively and express them symbolically. They are divine naturals, gifted but largely unconscious of the meaning of their own powers. McLuhan sees artists as mankind's 'early warning system.' They possess greater unity and openness of the senses and therefore respond earlier to the alteration of the 'sensory ratios' brought about by changes in technology...(125)."
Quoting McLuhan regarding the (ab)use of "values" by the country's "literary elite":
"For many years I have observed that the moralist typically substitutes anger for perception. He hopes that many people will mistake his irritation for insight....People hope that if they scream loudly enough about 'values' then others will mistake them for serious, sensitive souls who have higher and nobler perceptions than ordinary people. Otherwise, why would they be screaming? ...Moral bitterness is a basic technique for endowing the idiot with dignity.'"
206 reviews22 followers
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. 138). Hello?
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. 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. 7). 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.
42 reviews18 followers
Une tannée à lire.
Je passe sur les commentaires racistes et sexistes (l'auteur qui parle de mater des meufs qui ont l'âge d'être au lycée parce qu'on voit leur fesses... parce qu'elles sont en maillot de bain autour d'une piscine).
Déjà son style d'écriture est super éparpillé, y'a des sujets qui pourraient être intéressants si on n'avait pas que des citations de gens qui sont sous acide les unes à la suite des autres, on dirait qu'il passe plus de temps à décrire ses relations dans un environnement que l'environnement lui même, ce qui rend le sujet nul parce que clairement ses potes ont pour trait de personnalité d'être volubiles. Ce ne sont pas des chroniques sur les USA des années 60-70 mais sur l'entourage de Tom Wolfe des années 60-70.
Si Quentin dans Good Morning England avait écrit un livre ce serait probablement celui-là, et c'est pas un compliment même si j'adore ce film et Bill Nighy.
Author 3 books32 followers
Time Magazine sums it up: “The definitive, super-charged chronicle of today’s life styles by America’s foremost pop journalist.” Day-tripping, it’s always fun to read Wolfe, this one an assortment of articles originally published in 1968, the same year his other eclectic work was published: “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” If you’re a Wolfe fan, you’ll enjoy this trip back to the ‘60s. Fifteen counter-culture short stories - some outstanding, some less so - from surfing at La Jolla beaches to Hugh Hefner’s Chicago and Playboy Mansion, ushering in a host of memories for those old enough to remember.
14 reviews
The first story about a group of surfers in San Diego drew me in & a few of the stories were OK & kept me going but it rapidly becomes painfully dull. It is a collection of stories that focuses on social status. Most of the stories are centered around NYC’s so called high society. NYC & London society seems to be an obsession of Wolfe’s. If you’re fascinated by NYC society you may find it interesting although it’s very outdated. If you’re like me & have zero interest in NYC society don’t bother picking it up.
The only way I’d be interested in a story about NYC society is if it was degrading & dehumanizing the urbane scum.
This was a bit of a step down after From Bauhaus to Our House, but this did represent a jump back some of his earlier essays. But I don't know, even after getting past the rampant, casual racism and misogyny, I don't feel like Wolfe was so much engaging as he was trying to refine his style. Which is fair, all great writers have that process, I'm just not sure I need to read every step along the way. Beyond the titular surfers, I don't really feel at all enlightened about many of the subjects here.
730 reviews7 followers
This was incredible fun to read--Wolfe's prose is just really *good* and evocative--though it's striking how much his concerns are limited mostly to the white and well-to-do, even though who may be blue collar or slumming teenagers. Reading it just after Play It As It Lays was like taking a little trip back in time (and finding it intriguing but not, perhaps, especially evolved or good for most of the people around then.)
Leer estas crónicas en el año 2020 puede resultar una experiencia singular: la mayoría de los fenómenos culturales recogidos en sus páginas pueden parecer trasnochados, en apariencia, pero resultan casi siempre interesantes y, a veces, divertidos.
Destacaría Underground de Mediodía, Un Hotel Automatizado (una divertida diatriba contra el Hilton de Nueva York) y La Sentina Conductista; probablemente el retrato que menos vigencia ha perdido del conjunto.
Author 1 book31 followers
This is an interesting snapshot in the 1960s.
One thing I can say about Tom Wolfe as a writer is that he was probably the best part of every story he wrote. Yes, I understand that he was a journalist and this was nonfiction, but most of it would’ve been pretty boring nonfiction if it wasn’t for his touch as a writer. He made the dull interesting. The world is filled with mediocre people and a good writer finds a way to make reading about them fun I guess.
Entertaining.