tom wolfe-epictetus-frankfurt

[Christopher Gunn]

At 08:51 PM 5/1/00 -0400, bob scheetz <rscheetz@cboss.com> wrote:
>discussion last wk-end over significance in wolfe's "man in full"
>of the striking fact that his conrad-hero issues from 60's flower culture
>...after all is tom wolfe be our authentic merkan frankfurter?
>...are rad-chic, mau-mauing,...bonfire, man in full,
>frankfurter masterpieces?
>is there a frankfurter line on wolfe?

Wolfe is a swine and his ideas skirt the edges of small-f fascism, which in
a way is a shame since (in my opinion, anyway, speaking as a reformed
journalist) he's a tremendously talented writer, one who as a prose stylist
has certainly influenced me a great deal.

I haven't looked into the origins of Wolfe's ideas in great detail but
fundamentally he takes what sounds in some ways like a Frankfurter critique
of mass culture and EMBRACES the resulting pattern of domination as a
useful way of keeping the unwashed masses in line.  In his view this is
much better than suppression by brutal Cossacks, secret police, etc., and
results in less overall destruction than pogroms, race riots, and the other
things proles will do if left un-entertained.  Overall, I can think of
almost nothing more diametrically *opposed* to the basic Frankfurt
critique;  if there's affinity, it's the 0-degrees, 180-degrees linearity
of total contradiction.

If you're confused by Wolfe, you should try to track down one of his purest
socio-political statements, which was published ca. 1975 in a mainstream
mid-cult magazine (Atlantic, Harpers, something of that sort) but it was
also the introduction to a book by a man named Arnold Beichman called _Nine
Lies About America_.  It would probably be easier at this juncture to find
the book than to track down the article.  (This book is itself kind of
interesting;  Beichman was a former reporter for the leftish P.M. newspaper
who took a right turn and wound up writing a grim and utterly humorless
take on the Radical Chic theme.  'Grim and humorless' may even be Wolfe's
words from the introduction.  He obviously holds Beichman in contempt but
is willing to have some fun with him, too, in addition to getting a
political point across.)
Christopher W. Gunn
cgunn@socialrelations.net                318-474-5226
Social Relations Laboratory   www.socialrelations.net
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