Tom Wolfe - "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby"

In Wolfe’s style of writing, the 'New Journalism', he places himself dead center in the middle of whatever story is going on, and writes himself as the protagonist, affected by the American carnival swirling around him. He writes what he hears with little filtration, turning dialogue into a context from which to evaluate the whole situation. I think what New Journalism intended to do was disrupt the style of convention, assume a highly intelligent person was the audience, and also find evidence of a new culture growing in the US.

The New Journalism was also an attempt to fuse imaginative storytelling with factual reporting. Wolfe’s style wanders through made-up phrases – “Hemingway or a lot of other goddamn-and-hungry-breast writers,” “the Barbasol Sound,” and “Williams College boys,” obscure references – “Brancusi,” and “Dionysian,” and pop-culture name dropping – Cassius Clay, Cary Grant, the Avanti Studebaker; devices often left out of fiction. Some of the metaphors have lost their point of reference in later decades, but still intrigue the reader.

Wolfe, like E.B. White, plays on the division between urban and rural social culture. The Cassius Clay piece and the Junior Johnson piece are the best examples of this outlook. Strangely both the athletes came out of the country, but Clay found his fame under the lights of Times Square and Johnson found his on the dirt tracks of Hickory, N.C. I think Wolfe is entertained by the outcomes of the two different lives - both coming from the country, both superstars in their own right, yet undeniably distinct from each other. Wolfe's perspective is through the 'American Dream' lens, where everybody gets a shot to do whatever they want, and he seems fascinated very much by the fantastic, strange, and different desires that the American people can come up with.

“The Kandy-Kolored…” is the most complex of the stories, deeply investigating what on the surface would be a trifle to “the charming Aristocracy” (another Wolfeism). Yet his look into the American sub-culture reveals points about society otherwise unnoticed. This particular story is character driven, by the personalities of the car sculptors whom Wolfe elevates to the level of high artists. The car culture seems parallel to the curious architectural wonders of Las Vegas, also investigated in this book. Tom Wolfe seems to walk the line between sarcasm and reverence as he describes the peculiarities of American culture, but as he plunges deeper into the scenes that unfold around him, I think it becomes clear that he is by all accounts amazed at American ingenuity.

For a revealing interview with Wolfe, visit this site:

http://fora.tv/2008/05/12/Uncommon_Knowledge_Tom_Wolfe