If you are like me and you like books on the business of Hollywood you will love this one. I do not like books by Hollywood "insiders". They tend to write the books for nothing more than to pump themselves up and trash actors/studios, however books by journalists tend to be more even handed. Hit and Run is probably the best book on Hollywood ever written, The Devil's Cany is now second. What makes this book great is that it explains what the jobs of certain people are. For instance I didn't know what a second unit director was till I read this. Not to mention that the story about the adaptation of Bonfire of the Vanities makes for a great tale.

Julie Salamon was lucky enough to get in at the beginning of what was anticipated to be a great film, and turned out to be one of the biggest critical and financial failures for Warner Bros. The book Bonfire of the Vanities was so popular and written in such a style that taking on the task of adapting it to film was a true challenge and doomed to fail. And fail it did. Salamon also gives a background of the steps it takes to get a picture made from buying the rights of the book to marketing the finished picture. She details the different roles of the movie set, answering the age-old question, "What does a grip do?". You gather a great understanding of how difficult it is to make a picture by studio standards and how the hierarchy on the set works. Fascinating insight from an outsider let into the circus of making a major motion picture. Brian De Palma must curse the day he agreed to let her chronicle the journey.
Also, I have to recommend reading Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. You can understand why he wanted no part of making the film adaptaton of his infamous book.

Julie Salamon's book follows the making of the most anticpated film of 1990 and chronicles the problems, the fights, and the ensuing disppointments. A must read for anyone who wants to know how it really works, Salamon was there every step of the way throughout the pre-production, the filming, and the aftermath. Her descriptions of life on the set are accurate and not glossed over. She was there to give an honest account of a film that was going to be a huge hit but turned into one of the biggest failures Hollywood ever produced. If you are a movie buff, a gossip monger, or a huge fan of Tom Wolfe's book, you must pick this one up...if you can find it

Like "Thud Ridge", also by Col. Broughton, "Going Downtown" reflects on the former fighter pilt's experiences driving USAF F-105's through the flack, SAM and MiG infested skies of Vietnam. Readers who missed "Thud Ridge' may remember Broughton's story appearing in the Yeagher biography - a decorated and venerable fighter-pilot, Broughton was loved by the men he led, despite the draconian restrictions placed on them by politicians. During one mission that Broughton didn't even fly on, two of his pilots received fire from a flak gun aboard a Russian freighter, and responded with their own cannon. Jaded by the experience in which his pilots were clearly in the right, Broughton removed the gun camera film from the noses of the involved F-105's, and destroyed them. A board of review composed of such noted officers as Yeager and Robin Olds cleared Broughton's men but did cite Broughton for destruction of the gun camera film, a move that effectively ended his career as a fighter pilot. Broughton hints at the incident - the "Turkestan Affair" in Thud Ridge, but apparently decided against saying any more. Having decided otherwise in "Downtown", Broughton must have decided that he didn't have enough for a new book complimenting the first. Theough "Turkestan" and its consequences take up the latter half of the book, the first part is a mixed gril, offering the USAF's painful transition to the early and crude jets, the complicated underpinnings of the Vietnam war and the cover-up over the Tonkin Gulf incident.

The problem is that much of this seems out of place here - especially the author's anecdotes about the Air Force's experineces with early jets between Korea and Vietnam. The jets, which are underpowered and have over-complicated fire-control systems kill more of their own pilots than the enemy, and some - like the F-103 and the F-107 - never make the cut at all. None of those planes ever appears in Vietnam, and certainly not in Broughton's narrative. So why does he bother here? It's as if he realized that he hadn't enough, apart from "Turkestan" that merited a new book, and quicly decided that, besides some anecdotes about the Veitnam airwar overlooked from the first book, he might as well just keep going back, and toss in soem historical background about vietnam and USAF for good measure. Concluding his survey of the famed "Century Series" fighter jets, Broughton says "something funny was happening in southeast asia." But it was nevr clear why he didn't begin with southeast asia and leave all that other stuff behind. It's important stuff, but would be of better use as something Broughton could reflecton while flying in vietnam - as more of a personal context than an historical one. Actually, Broughton sells himself short - giving equal time to all subjects when I'd prefer a whole book with him in the F-105. Considering that he flew the most pivotal missions of his career in that plane, it's incredible that my knowledge of it seems unchanged from when I first opened "Going Downtown."

This book captures the true spirit of a fighter pilot and why they are such special people. His war on Hanoi, waged with one hand tied behind his back by McNamara and President Johnson needed to be told. And he told it as only a fighter pilot could. You could be reading fiction, but it's real. Where do we get men that court death and face losing friends every day. Colonel Broughton is busy telling us about his fight with Hanoi and Washington. But, what also comes through is the daily struggle of men strapping on an airplane and doing their duty against great odds. The rules of engagement are discussed and how they affected the lives of those charged with enforcing them. Colonel Broughton had over 200 missions. He is a true American hero.

I've read both this book and the predecessor "Thud Ridge" as well as several book written by Vietnam war era pilots. Col Broughton knows his stuff and tells it like it was. If you ever wondered why we failed in Vietnam ,you will understand why after reading this book. Poor leadership by Air Force Generals( one couldn't be sure whether the enemy was the N.V. or the upper level command) from 5000 miles away, telling wing commanders how to do their jobs ( and having no clue as how a tactical fighter wing works), Washington's tying their hands behind their back with target selection and restrictive rules of engagement, micromanagement from above, all added up to a winnable war that they were not allowed win( except the guys risking their butts flying to Hanoi). I heartily recommend reading this book and also Thud Ridge for some fascinating insight of this era. Also I'd recommend Phantom over Vietnam , John Trotti and PAK SIX by G.I. Basel.

Ken Kesey took LSD in the early '60's while working in a California mental hospital. One result of that experience was the brilliant novel 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'; another was the decision to pursue drug experimentation as a new way of interpreting reality. With his novel's revenues supporting him Kesey became the west-coast guru of the emerging Psychedelic Movement, surrounding himself with a gang of hippies known as 'The Merry Pranksters' and leading a wild life partying with the Grateful Dead, Neal Cassady, Owsley, the Hell's Angels, Timothy Leary and assorted hangers-on, promoters and victims.

In the late '60's Tom Wolfe, a leading exponent of 'the new journalism', paid Kesey a visit and sat in on the decline and eclipse of Kesey as a major player in the California counterculture. Wolfe's cool but funky irony seems like a perfect match for Kesey and co., but in fact there's a subtle mocking undercurrent to Wolfe's narrative. The whole point of the 'new journalism' was subjectivity, of course, so presumably the whole thing is MEANT to be suspect, but still... I've seen a Kesey-version of the Prankster's tale, a trade paperback that looked self-published, but don't see anything about it here at Amazon.

The novel's ending is a neat skewer of Kesey and the Pranksters, and it's not giving the whole story away to describe it. The gang is scheduled to perform a psychedelic music gig at a local bar. After 'accidentally' ruining the preceding band's performance the Pranksters get their turn on stage... and can't get it together. But hey! Nothing lasts... Cassady is dead, the Psychedelic Movement was a bust, and some of the Pranksters aren't too merry anymore, and are leaving the bus... a dismal metaphor for the counter-culture.

There is something so sweet and so innocent about the myth of the 60s that you almost forget that these people were just as prone to infighting, backstabbing, selfishness, jealousy, and all the other sins that shows like Survivor capitalize upon.

Tom Wolfe takes a rare journalistic travel with some of the original hippies - Ken Kesey's merry pranksters who travel the country on a bus driven by Neal Cassidy in his post-On the Road, pre-dead on a railroad tracks glory while dropping acid and having lots of sex. There are gang bangs, acid laced koolaid, arrests, faked deaths, and the beginning of one of the greatest novels in America.

Written with less journalistic objectivity than most book, you can tell that Tom Wolfe is a fan of these guys even as he doesn't directly participate in their lifestyle as you imagine Hunter S. Thompson would do. Wolfe compiles thousands of interviews and experiences in order to bring people into the heads of these tripped out losers and in the process makes them into legends. The only problem is that sometimes WOlfe goes a little too far off the deep end and in creating dialogue and internal monologues for these characters he's more projecting his own biases. A later book of his (The Right Stuff) takes this method to extremes as he spends a good deal of time writing his narrative from a test monkey's perspective. While there is nothng so extreme in this book, it is more pervasive here.

This is both a classic of the 60s counterculture and a great example of gonzo journalism (which is to real journalism like Herodotus is to history). At very least it is a great insight into the mind and work of Ken Kesey who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (partially on acid) and who became a celebrity in his own right.

By the way, if you are going to buy this book you might as well buy One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. You won't be able to resist that book if you read this one.

Regardless of one's ultimate attitudes about the permissive atmosphere that prevailed during the Pandora's Box that became the 1960's, Thomas Wolfe's detailed, passionate and fascinating portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters makes for required reading.

Whether for ill or well, Kesey and the Pranksters are responsible for creating much of what the popular masses call "The 60's". While reading this book, that mere (and ironic) fact becomes ever so clear.

When I recently visited Kesey at his ranch in Oregon, I asked him if Wolfe "got it right". Kesey's response? "Yes he did. But understand that he (Wolfe) gives a real East Coast version of what was essentially a West Coast phenomenon."

What I think that means essentialy validates many of the other positive reviews of this book: Wolfe uncannily possesses the ability to be "in the Pranster's world, but not of it".

This means that while Wolfe is fully willing and able to passionately incorperate the unique linguistic acrobatics of Kesey and the Pranksters in relating the narrative, he maintains somehow a cool, objective distance from all the proceedings. Kesey might be saying that while Wolfe was certainly "on the bus", he was never "ON THE BUS!".

This distance is communicated and maintained by Wolfe's refusal to judge the shennanigans. He never really says "yay" or "nay" to the invention of the "counter culture" (whatever in the hell that means). He relates the consequences both natural and man-made that befalls on such behavior, but never comes out from behind the page and says "booh!"

He wisely leaves all moral judgement in the place where it rightly belongs: in the hearts and minds of the readers.

It is not a book for the weak of back, heart or mind. It will challenge the reader as well as entertain for Wolfe pulls no punches and that is a treatment most appropriate for the Hemingway-esque machismo frat boy jock mentality that underlies all of Kesey's art.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a excellent example of brilliant reporting. It combines stunning writing with cool logic and impassioned empathetic distance. This is a must read.

"Radical Chic and Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers" is comprised of two short essays written by Tom Wolfe and first published in book form in 1970. While much has changed over the last three decades in America regarding the topic of race, the essays of this book are just as applicable now as they were when Wolfe wrote them.

"Radical Chic" is the story of a party thrown by Leonard Bernstein to raise money for the Black Panthers; specifically, for their legal defenses. Wolfe lets their own words and actions at this typical party be the objects by which these elite, Manhattanite, "limousine liberals" completely humiliate themselves. The lengths to which the Bernstein crowd goes--from whom they employ to what they wear--to remove anything that could possibly be viewed as "intolerant" is simply comical to almost anyone except for this crowd. As one who currently lives in New York City, this book was hilarious to read since any differences between the crowd Wolfe satirized in 1970 and the Manhattanite left-wing elitists of today, are virtually non-existent. As "Radical Chic" closes, this crowd is sent scrambling to distance themselves from the Panthers, not because the Panthers were anarchist street thugs, but because they are shown to be virulent racists, especially regarding anti-Semitism. Upper class Leftists, scrambling to distance themselves from the anti-Semitic comments of black leaders they once supported politically... my, how things have changed.

While "Radical Chic" is the longer and usually more famous of the two essays, "Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers" is Wolfe writing at a better, more colorful level than in "Radical Chic", where the essay's subjects do most of the talking. In "Flak Catchers" Wolfe again takes on the topic of angry minorities and their more affluent supporters in the white community. This time, Wolfe uses the racial melting-pot in San Francisco to show the numerous "impoverished" groups uniting to make themselves seen and heard by the local government. Wolfe demonstrates his perspicacity in putting a human face on these groups and objectively showing their personal motives for giving the white government office workers (the Flak Catchers), an occasional shakedown. But here too, Wolfe is not commenting on the minority group nearly as much as he is on the white, middle class, Northern Californians that seek to appease these groups at any cost. His cynical view of these people comes not from disagreement with their wanting to help the less fortunate, but from their complete phoniness, which ultimately blinds them to the acts and words of some nefarious characters.

As Wolfe writes in "Flak Catchers": "You'd turn on the TV, and there would be some dude you had last seen just hanging out on the corner with the porkpie hat scrunched down over his eyes and the toothpick nodding on his lips--and there he was now on the screen, a leader, a 'black spokesman,' with whites in the round-shouldered suits and striped neckties holding microphones up to his mouth and waiting for The Word to fall from his lips."

Exactly.

Take a half-cup of William F. Buckley, mix with a spoonful of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, stir in a dollop of David Horowitz, and leaven with a pinch of Hunter S. Thompson; boil, simmer, and stir----and you have Tom Wolfe, acerbic and acid observer of 20th century American society and possibly one of the keenest society writers since Ambrose Bierce. Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is a slender little tome, with just 152 pages comprising two essays that cut to the quick of race and class relations in American society during the "Summer of Love." These two witty and mesmerizing little essays cut to the heart of the bizarre practice of society's elite espousing radical causes, and effectively capture and explain the seeming paradox of that strangest of modern beasts, the Limousine Liberal.

The first essay, "Radical Chic", is Wolfe's account of the high-society party thrown by New York Symphony conductor Leonard Bernstein and his wife for members of the Black Panthers, at the time a rising group of racialist incendiaries, revolutionaries, and terrorists. But as Wolfe points out, to the jaded, bored, decadent Central Park elite, they were exciting! Glamorous! Naughty! And highly fashionable, which is why the Thing to Do in New York High Society in 1969 was to throw penthouse parties for radicals.

What caused this? And why is it that so many of the affluent and wildly rich of today's American high society sport such radically leftist views, championing causes from banning fur to banning handguns to abolishing capitalism? According to Wolfe, it's a tactic of the newly rich called "nostalgie de la boue." Translated as "nostalgia for the mud", it takes the form of romanticizing the trappings, fashion, style, and even radical philosophies of the underclass in pursuit of irony, social aplomb, and prestige. While Wolfe doesn't mention this, even Marie Antoinette engaged in her own "nostalgie de la boue", meticulously recreating a 17th century French peasant village on the grounds of Versailles, where she and her ladies-in-waiting would play at being French peasant women.

"Radical Chic" takes the reader on a fascinating trip inside Bernstein's Park Avenue luxury apartment, but the reporter-style writing is actually drier than the more engaging "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers." And best of all, "Radical Chic" offers a hysterical running dialogue between Lenny Bernstein and Black Panther Don Cox that Hollywood itself couldn't improve upon---with guest appearances by Barbara Walters, the Belafontes, and Otto Preminger!

"Mau Mau-ing the Flak Catchers" is more flamboyant, and, oddly enough, more interesting. "Mau-mauing" operates as a sort-of handbook for inner-city psychological against the "Man" (read: white middle-class social services bureaucrats) for fun, prizes, and most of all, money. Interestingly enough, Mau-Mauing (getting some friends and going down to the local social services office for a demonstration) played off white dread of the Racial Other, but Wolfe notes how effectively the largely white bureaucracy of the time used the system to co-opt the Revolutionaries. As Wolfe himself notes, "maybe the bureaucracy isn't so stupid at all. All they did is sacrifice one flak-catcher, and they've got hundreds, thousands."

Best of all, the second essay shows the early literary seedlings and ideas which would germinate in "Bonfire of the Vanities", including the idea of mau-mauing for fun and profit, wily social services operators who did (and do) understand the fear that white liberals have of appearing racist, the "pimp roll" and "pimp style" that infuriated Bonfire's young Assistant D.A., and even the Radical Chic parties that crop up in Bonfire and Wolfe's later novel, A Man in Full.

Both essays are fantastic reads, full of perceptive observations that illuminate how the Other Half was living the Summer of Love, and providing some insight into our own upside-down world of American race and class politics.

These are two long essays dealing with Race in America in the late 1960's. Radical Chic is the more famous of the two. Imagine the scene as Leonard Bernstien and his wife throw a cocktail party in their posh Manhattan Apartment with members of the Black Panther Party as the guests of honor. Wolfe was present at this strange event and offers a play by play of how Radical became all the Chic in the New York social scene...briefly. Bernstien's reputation received national tarnish, and Wolfe explains it all in his witty and insightful style. The book takes a snapshot of the late 60's and Wolfe deconstructs it to explain:White Guilt, New York Society, Zeitgeist, Media Frenzy and other assorted Social-Pop phenomena. Radical Chic is a fun read and will explain a lot about how the better half understood the radicalism of the 60's. I actually prefer the lesser known Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Anyone who has ever been involved in interest group politics will howl with laughter as angry minority youths confront pasty white bureaucrats in Oakland in the late 60's. This essay doesn't have the celebrity glamour of Radical Chic, but a lot more people have worked on local race and diversity issues than have made the Manhattan scene with Lenny Bernstien and the like. This essay really explains the purest democratization that was the result of the radical politics of the 60's.

I opened this book with a limited interest in the Space Race, jet pilots, or Tom Wolfe, but have become fascinated by all three. This is an extremely well written, exciting, fast paced novel that takes place during the early days of space flight and focuses on the personalities who drove our pursuit to beat the Russians. It contains subtle criticism of the space program and the people inside it, which is a nice subplot to the story, but the adventure and energy is what makes this a great book. I will again read Wolfe and want to learn more about the history of the space program now, and when a book inspires these kind of reactions I can not help but recommend it to anyone who asks for a suggestion.

Tom Wolfe gives a brilliantly entertaining and inspirational book about one of the most colorful chapters in recent American history -- from the first supersonic piloted flight up to the early Sixties, when astronauts completed the beginning of America's space program. Wolfe writes about "the right stuff--" a blend of correct judgment, coolness, and the ability to get the job done, no matter what the danger. Wolfe rarely depends on technical stuff, so the book will appeal to those who know or care little about aviation or space, and there's little to deter the squeamish, ither. The author shows the period's bright side (the accomplishments in spite of the danger, the dopamine-flowing release after a job well-done, the intense exhilaration of it all) , and the dark side (the fears of the families, the tragic deaths from minor lapses in luck or judgment, the tedious egomania of many involved in the programs).
This book epitomizes the bright and dark side of Wolfe's school of writing, too. Above all, Wolfe can be as riveting and as entertaining as you'll find -- "truth can be funnier than fiction." I have heard how Wolfe caught the essence of what someone wanted to say even better than the one who said it, and he sure puts you into the thick of the action. The author gives a legitimate and interesting perspective. Nevertheless, this style plays heavily on your emotions, with all the problems that can involve, and the book is not terribly objective -- a purely entertaining incident can assume more importance than it should. Since Wolfe's storytelling style can blur the distinction between fact and conjecture, it "stretches the envelope" of truthtelling, so if another storyteller doesn't have basic integrity (and many authors and journalists regrettably do not), this style of writing can be misleading or deceptive. Character development and depth are questionable; those who have "the right stuff" in the face of danger are portrayed as almost superhuman, and those who don't are made into buffoons (no matter how significant their contributions to the mission). This "tyranny of the cool" can get a bit annoying after a while.
In short, I think Wolfe's book gives a grand idea of the spirit of the times, and of life's entertainment value, but it is rightly considered a novel rather than history. I easily gave it five stars because it is SUCH an inspirational and delightful read, but I would approach it with a bit of light-hearted skepticism.

For a very long time "The Right Stuff" was my favorite book (excluding the Bible, which is unique). Even after reading Dante's "Divine Comedy," I'm not sure Wolfe's book has been dislodged from its position.

Wolfe begins to work his literary magic on the first page. A young, beautiful woman is worried about her husband, a Navy test pilot, having heard that there has been a plane crash. Space buffs like me reading the book are fascinated to realize that the woman is Jane Conrad, wife of Pete Conrad (which, incidentally, tells us that the bad news that day won't be about her husband). If this scene appeared in a different book about the space program, even one as superb as Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon" or Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger's "Apollo 13," the account of events, while exciting and suspenseful, would remain on a somewhat mundane plane of everyday reality. Wolfe's glittering, idiosyncratic literary style lifts events into a world of super-reality. We experience Jane Conrad's concern and dread as if we were Jane Conrad. Perhaps more than any other book I have read, "The Right Stuff" has caused me to remember the events it relates as if I lived through them rather than reading about them.

One noteworthy feature of Wolfe's style in this book is his nearly Wagnerian use of verbal "leitmotiven," key phrases which pop up over and over in the book and come to convey far more than the simple content of the words. Anyone who has read the book will remember for a long time Wolfe's use of such phrases as "bad streak," "Flying and Drinking and Drinking and Driving," "the Integral," "our rockets always blow up," "the Presbyterian Pilot," "single combat warrior," "ziggurat," and, of course, "the right stuff."

The book also contains the funniest set-piece in any book I have ever read, the description of the celebration when the astronauts and their families first visit Houston, including the fan dance by the ancient Sally Rand. Interestingly, in the excellent film version of the book this scene was transformed from a hilarious comedy sequence into something elegiac, intercut with the sequence of Chuck Yeager bailing out of a plane (which happened on a different day in reality and in the book) to create drama and suspense. In this radically different form the two sequences are just as effective in the movie as they are in the book.

"The Right Stuff" has sometimes been criticized for being overly fictionalized, or at least speculative. These criticisms probably have a great deal of validity, but they do not alter the fact that "The Right Stuff" is the definitive evocation of that brief era around 1960 when almost anything, good or bad, seemed possible. It is an unforgettable literary achievement.

What could have driven Edmund Wilson to betray his friend Vladimir Nabokov? Why was Mark Twain so remarkably mean-spirited toward Bret Harte, going to great lengths to ruin Harte's reputation?

Why did F.R. Leavis indulge in character assassination of C.P. Snow? How could a man so celebrated, so revered as Ernest Hemingway let himself be upset by Gertrude Stein, an old woman who had once been his mentor and friend?

What demons drove Truman Capote to the miserable death that Gore Vidal called "a good career move"? Why did Lillian Hellman bring a libel suit against Mary McCarthy, accusing her of slander and defamation of character? What caused Norman Mailer to physically assault Gore Vidal at a cocktail party in 1974?

Anthony Arthur's latest work, Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe, is filled with gossip and vitriolic attacks.

Some of our most illustrious writers have tried to destroy the reputations of their enemies, using wit, humor, sarcasm, invective, and the occasional right cross to the jaw.

For example, consider these quotations taken from Arthur's work:
Ernest Hemingway: "Gertrude Stein was never crazy/Gertrude Stein was very lazy."
Sinclair Lewis: "I still say you [Theodore Dreiser] are a liar and a thief."
Theodore Dreiser: "He [Sinclair Lewis] is noisy, ostentatious, and shallow. . . . I never could like the man."
Mary McCarthy: " Every word she [Lillian Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"
Gore Vidal: "It is inhuman to attack [Truman] Capote. You are attacking an elf."

It would be a mistake, however, to think Literary Feuds is only a book of juicy gossip. Anthony Arthur, an accomplished literary historian and critic, demonstrates his expertise in literary history and criticism.

Arthur, who was a Fulbright Scholar and for many years has taught writing and literature at California State University, Northridge.

In the eight essays of this book, Arthur draws on a lifetime of reading and teaching the works of 16 cantankerous writers whom he describes.

Arthur scatters insightful comments throughout the work. For example, "As every teacher of literature knows, comedy and satire are harder to teach than tragedy and melodrama; everyone can feel, but not everyone can think."

Provocative quotations also abound. For example, Gore Vidal, a "born-again atheist," opines, "The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism."

One should not be too eager to search for "opposites" when investigating literary feuds. It does seem, however, that many of the literary artists described in this book are "opposites" in their temperaments, worldviews, politics, or aesthetic tastes.

Those who espouse "realism" or "naturalism" are at cross-purposes with those who champion "idealism" or "romanticism." Rural sentiments clash with urban mentalities; elitism and populism collide.

The outstanding cause of these feuds, however, was pride and the competitive spirit. Mark Twain knew he was a better writer than Bret Harte and could not abide critics who lumped them together as belonging to the same echelon.

Of course, one must not discount that green-eyed monster of envy--the jealousy and bitterness of an outdistanced rival over the fame and financial success of a rival.

Commendable for their style and substance, these true tales of feuding wordsmiths are fascinating, behind-the-scenes glimpses of our (mostly) 20th-century American literati.

Anthony Arthur is the author of Deliverance at Los Banos and Bushmaster, both narrative histories of World War II, and of The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist. He lives in Woodland Hills, California.

Anthony Arthur presents eight literary feuds in chronological order: Mark Twain and Bret Harte, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser, Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov, C.P. Snow and F.R. Leavis, Lillian Hellman and Mary Mccarthy, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe and John Updike.

Arthur is an excellent writer, and it is great fun to read his elegant prose about badly behaved literary types. I was familiar with some of the authors discussed but not all, as I was familiar with some of the animosities but not all of them. Arthur turns a beautiful phrase and has a knack for finding illustrative, sometimes toxic quotes. One good thing about fights between scribes -- they leave lots of luscious things in writing!

The eight disputes are interesting by virtue of the characters or the topic or both, and the author does a fine job of describing the people involved and laying out the foundation and history of each quarrel. Moreover, he makes insightful comments about the disagreement or the relative merits of the protagonists. I thoroughly enjoyed these tales of intelligent people behaving poorly.

--That is, resplendently at their conniving, back-stabbing, vainglorious best.

Anthony Arthur's polished and scholarly accounts of eight famous literary feuds beginning with Mark Twain and Bret Harte, and ending with Tom Wolfe and John Updike, come across as fairly expressed and finely observed. True, with my fabled ability to read between the lines, I can see in places where perhaps the good professor favors one side or the other. Indeed, part of the fun of reading a book like this is discerning where the author's sympathies lie. (You might want to discern for yourself.) But for the most part Professor Arthur lets the chips fall where they may and keeps a balanced keel through the straits of the tempest-tossed tussles while knavishly enjoying himself like an after-the-fact provocateur.

Notable are Arthur's physical descriptions of the gladiators, usually quoting contemporary sources. Thus the young Truman Capote, who is squared off against Gore Vidal, is "unnaturally pretty, with wide, arresting blue eyes and blond bangs" (p. 161) while Vidal is "Tall and slender, Byronically handsome...luminous and manly" (p. 159). (Uh...nevermind.) Sinclair Lewis, who fights with Theodore Dreiser (physically on one occasion--or at least Dreiser is reported to have slapped Lewis), has a "hawkish nose" and a "massive frontal skull...reddish but almost colorless eyebrows above round, cavernously set, remarkably brilliant eyes..." (p. 49) Dreiser, self-described, has "a semi-Roman nose, a high forehead and an Austrian lip, with the edges of my teeth always showing...." (p. 56) The effect of these descriptions along with Arthur's bright and lively (and very careful) style is to make the literary warriors especially vivid and to impress upon us just how human they are.

Arthur however is at his best in coming up with really juicy quotes to illustrate the matters of contention. Thus Lillian Hellman dismissed Mary McCarthy (Chapter 6) as merely "a lady magazine writer" (p. 141) while McCarthy charged in an interview with Dick Cavett that Hellman "is tremendously overrated, a bad writer, and a dishonest writer..." whose every written word "is a lie, including AND and THE" [my capitalization, p. 143], causing the fur to fly. More civilized was the exchange between Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov where Wilson expresses his disappointment with Nabokov's novel, Bend Sinister: "You aren't good at...questions of politics and social change, because you are totally uninterested in these matters and have never taken the trouble to understand them." Nabokov replies: "In historical and political matters you are partisan of a certain interpretation which you regard as absolute." (pp. 90-91) (They're just sparring: it heats up later on.)

One of the most interesting bits in the book is from page 32 in which it is asserted that Ernest Hemingway learned part of his style from Gertrude Stein (feud number two) by copying her gerund-driven, run-on sentence constructions. What is especially amusing is that Arthur gives a sentence from Stein and then a similar one from Hemingway--"ing's" flying. The effect was bad in Gertrude Stein, and, although improved in Hemingway, it was still bad. Arthur's book is full of these delightfully sly bits of satire.

He also likes to slip in a few literary jokes. For example, British Don F. R. Leavis, who is in combat with C.P. Snow over the famous "Two Cultures," is characterized as saying of his "fellow Fellows": "They can all go to hell. Of course, some should go before the others. One has a responsibility to make discriminations." (Quoted from Frederick Crews, p. 116) Also: "J.B. Priestley...called Leavis a sort of Calvinist theologian...who makes one feel that he hates books and authors...not...from exceptional fastidiousness but...[as a] result of some strange neurosis, as if he had been frightened by a librarian in early childhood." (p. 118)

All in all, a most entertaining and informative read from a fine prose stylist.

I've always had a fascination with highly creative people, enjoyed jazz that was ahead of its time, the things that broke the earlier bounds. But I never could understand fashionable contemporary art. Wolfe has explained to why this is so. It turns out that I'm not supposed to understand it; it's intended for an exclusive audience, and my lack of understanding is what validates it to the people for whom it is intended. Suddenly, it all makes perfect sense to me, and as I think about acquaintances who do immerse themselves in the contemporary art scene, my observations correlate directly with Wolfe's.

Where the book falls short is that it fails to recognize that this remains art. It might be odiously exclusive, but it's still a communication between the artist and the intended audience. In fact, Wolfe has probably helped me understand this communication better than I ever did.

A good thought-provoking read; I take some glee in the fact that art world snobs thought he was skewering them (and perhaps Wolfe thought he was, too), but really, he's just explaining the mechanisms at work. And of course, it has some classic Wolfe lines, especially a laugh-out-loud description of young female admirers doing "Culture pouts through their Little Egypt eyes." Worth it for that line alone.

I read both this book and Linda Weintraub's "Art on the Edge" at the same time. I liked both very much and highly recommend both of them to get a full picture of the modern art world.

Weintraub clearly explains the concepts and theories behind the avante garde art of the 70s-90s, including Jeff Koons, Serrano's (in)famous Piss Christ, etc. Tom Wolfe cries that art theory has taken over art (which necessitates people like Weintraub to explain what's going on), that art is controlled by a clique, that some artists just want to shock the masses and to please the clique, and that the masses need not apply. I think these are very valid points, after all, Vanessa Beecroft posed 20 nude or bikini-clad babes in the Guggenheim and Heilman-C showed actual people having sex (See the 1998 review article in the ArtNet website).

But Tom does not discuss the larger issues: "Is this art? What is art?" That, combined with the fact that Wolfe wrote the book more as an opinion piece rather than the more journalistic approach he took in Electric Kool-Aid, forced me to take a star off.

It should be noted that Tom criticizes the art world's need for something new, where he was the "new" thing in the journalistic world in the 50s and 60s, in the nonfiction world in the 60s and 70s, and in the fiction world in the 80s and 90s. It's like the pot calling the kettle black.

It should also be noted that Tom was part of the art world himself, as he has exhibited his caricatures in NYC galleries. Caricatures, of course, are downplayed in the fine arts world. Keep this possible bias in mind as you read this book.

Nonetheless, the Painted Word is a fun, quick read that should make even the most-hardened boho artist think.

Well, here we go - time to criticize a culture critic. Try saying that three times fast.

Anyone who knows anything about Tom Wolfe will know exactly what to expect from this 1975 exploration of the 1950-1970 Art World. Considering that he's always on the lookout for something funny to say, he does quite a good job, probably because the Art World is apparently a pretty funny place. Then again, that's always true of any insular group that develops its own vocabulary and learns to take itself too seriously.

According to Wolfe, that judgment applies equally to the artists, their critics, and the small world of collectors that support them both. He uses as an example the following cycle: Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning paint a few pictures using mere blobs of paint. At about the same time, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg conclude in their columns that painting must naturally go in the direction of increased "flatness" to fulfill its destiny (and they do, in fact, write in such semi-apocalyptic terms). To illustrate their point, Greenberg and Rosenberg talk up Pollack and de Kooning. Art patrons in Milan, Rome, Paris and New York read the columns and get interested in Pollack and de Kooning. Thus encouraged, these artists paint even flatter paintings, Greenberg and Rosenberg chat them up even more in their columns, the Art World gets more excited, and round and round we go until a guy named Leo Steinberg smashes into the cycle. He declares that they've got it all wrong, the true "flatness" exists in the Pop Art of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the whole thing starts all over again. Only with even more feverish declarations of theoretical orthodoxy this time.

Eventually, of course, the theory becomes far more important in the Art World than the paintings. This gives rise to Op Art, Happenings, Conceptual Art, and the world we live in today wherein the answer to the question "What is Art?" is "That which we find in Art Museums."

Wolfe splashes all this high comedy around in a truly scrumptious style, full of exclamation points. Behind the rhetoric, I suspect, is a man who thinks very highly of himself, but what else can we expect from a culture critic? Fortunately, what with all those exclamation points, it's fairly clear that Wolfe doesn't really take himself all that seriously, so his work is much easier to enjoy than it otherwise would be.

Even more interesting than the language, however, is the odd feeling one gets from The Painted Word that Wolfe doesn't think of the mid-century Art Follies as necessarily a bad thing, or even bad art. And indeed, who says that Art Theory is anything other than Art itself? Why criticize this development? Why not just enjoy it?

So in his last few pages, Wolfe predicts a retrospective in the year 2000. Instead of the paintings, this retrospective presents the true Art of the 1950's-1970's - the columns of Greenberg, Rosenberg, Steinberg, and whatever other Bergs in enormous reproduction, with tiny illustrations of the paintings in question next to them. As I write this, such an exhibit is nowhere yet to be seen, but that may only mean that Wolfe is smarter than the average museum curator (a supposition I can neither confirm nor deny). Be that as it may, Wolfe's craft is undeniable - sarcastic, informed, bitchy, and overwhelmingly funny. If the Word is Art, then the hyper-serious Greenberg, Rosenberg and Steinberg are mere wannabes. Wolfe, like Groucho Marx, is an Artist.

Benshlomo says, in the words of William Shakespeare, better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

Being a huge fan of the other two Tom Wolfe books I've read, "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and "A Man In Full", I was naturally curious to read Wolfe's first book. Unfortunately, I didn't find it to be as sharp or witty as his more recent work, possibly due to this one being non-fiction. I found it to essentially be a set of rambling observations about the state of life in America in the 60's. His choices of subject are clever and put a whole new spin on my view of the United States of the mid-twentieth century but on the whole I found large stretches of the book to be quite dry and, in my opinion, unnecessarily convoluted.

Wolfe is sharp in documenting the developments in America. Vivisecting society with language that is at once descriptive and critical, Wolfe pops inflated egos and elevates the seemingly shallow mod culture. Its a riot to see class, culture, celebrities, and heroes through his witty and keen observations. God Bless America!!!

This book is , like, cool. There is a lot of words that really speak to me, man. yeah

I have always admired Wolfe's ability to describe the social landscape in artful precision, and these essays (plus novella) are no exception. The parts I found most enjoyable were his takes on the evolutionary-biology-neurology rise, the bio of Silicon Valley's founder, and the fun he had with the New Yorker in his early days. One of the things that makes Wolfe great is his perpetual optimism and wonder about the new. I didn't care for the novella all that much (I'd already read it in Rolling Stone). It's a bit flat. Also the little essay about criticism and Updike, Mailer, and Irving was a bit disturbing. It seems to me that both camps are wrong: the modern novel should not be pigeon-holed; there are many different styles of writing a work of fiction and neither Wolfe or his critics have an appropriate stand to dictate otherwise.

If you love living in America, if you're thrilled by the raw courage of entrepeneurial effort that explodes into success, and if you refuse to accept the center-left line America's liberal elite wants to hand you, then Tom Wolfe is your go-to guy. He's hard-working, brilliant, and writes like a man playing a burning piano.

Although many know him best for his novels like "Bonfire of the Vanities" and "A Man in Full", you're missing his best work if you don't read the essay collections like "Hooking Up". In this volume, we get the true story behind the birth of Silicon Valley, a tale of a great artist no one knows because he possesses actual skill, a novella skewering the television news magazines, and several other gems.

If you have a Wolfe collection, add this book to it. If you don't have a Wolfe collection, start one!

I first read a favorable review of this book in The Wall Street Journal so I bought it because I enjoyed Mr. Wolfe's other books. I then read a New York Times review which wasn't really a review but a political diatribe against the author.

After actually reading the book I find that his style and observations so compelling and interesting that I can't believe I was reading the same book as the Time's reviewer.

Mr. Wolfe's story about his run-in with Mailer, Updike and Irving is very funny and rings true. The sales numbers tell the story.

"The Invisible Artist" is another favorite.

I only wish Mr. Wolfe would write a piece about the election fiasco and split in the country.

I also wish he would write more material and more often as he is a national treasure.

His journalistic based style is similar to that of Neal Stephenson and Richard Dooling. I enjoy those books so much more than Updike's pondering himself.

Because I grew up in La Jolla, and graduated from La Jolla High School, class of 1962, I was only interested in the short story: "The Pump House Gang."

I know most of the characters in the story, and believe that Wolfe did a good job describing them. His account of the La Jollans visiting the Watts Riots was right on. I visited the riot zone myself, and enjoyed the same experiences as Shine, Nelander, and Sterncorb.

Wolfe came as close as any "outsider" has been able to do, in analyzing the La Jolla nut house, the institution where the walls fell down, and none of the inmates left.

Tom Wolfe pursues the idea that many Americans and Brits since World War II have been checking out of mainstream status competition in favor of pursuing status within distinct subcultures. This plays out in some interesting ways--most notably Wolfe watches Natalie Wood pursue status in a more traditional way by acquiring knowledge of art and even some Old Masters, while others play their own status game around photographing celebrities, in this case Wood herself. Essays on Hugh Hefner, California surf culture, and London mods are also worthwhile, as is a comic piece on Wolfe's misadventures with an "automated hotel". Wolfe does bog down at times, however, in the minute stylistic details of the groups he covers; if you are not that interested in style in and of itself, your eyes may glaze over those passages. Still, this is a good read for anyone interested in subcultures (especially of the 1960s) and status-seeking.

Tom Wolfe is brilliant in capturing a generation's feel. This collection of short stories describes the socialites, the freaks and the trend-setters. Wolfe's language manages to show the physical as well as the atmosphere within a few short sentences. If you liked his wit in "The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test" and his observations (social x-rays) in "Bonfire of the Vaities," you will love this collection of social critical essays.