In these two
devastatingly funny essays, Tom Wolfe examines political stances, social styles,
“black rage,” and “white guilt” in our status-minded world.
In “These Radical Chic Evenings,” Wolfe
focuses primarily on one symbolic event: a gathering of the politically correct
at Leonard Bernstein’s duplex apartment on Park Avenue to meet spokesmen of the
Black Panther Party. He re-creates the incongruous scene and its astonishing
repercussions with high fidelity.
And in “Mau-Mauing
the Flak Catchers,” Wolfe travels to San
Francisco to survey another meeting-ground between militant minorities and the
liberal white establishment. This time
the meeting deals with the newly emerging art of confrontation, as practiced
by San Francisco’s militant minorities in response to a highly bureaucratized
poverty program.
With his fourth
book, which brought the phrase “radical chic” into the cultural lexicon, Wolfe
has never been more unflinching with his patented social criticism.
Download and start listening now!