101–110 of 116 posts
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I’m not really fussed by ‘wallflowers transgression, but I find rationalizing stealing from a public library by posting in an a Gucci tech/business website a bit problematic.
Oh I agree, but was just trying to mitigate the harshness with a little good feeling. We all have enough to point fingers at ourselves about.
Sad day! For, those who want to spend time at work to reminiscence here are some links I found interesting: * "How Tom Wolfe Became … Tom Wolfe", a good profile from Vanity Fair , 2015: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/how-tom-wolfe-bec... * "Tom Wolfe", an early profile one year after the Kool Aid Test had been published, from The Harvard Crimson , 1969: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/5/8/tom-wolf…
I remember discovering "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" in my high school library. I eventually stole it by taking out the plastic-encased metal security dingy and devoured it more. I read it over and over until the paperback fell apart. It introduced me to a world so foreign and sparkly and rusty dangerous and yet so real. RIP Tom Wolfe for bringing us into your worlds of observation and intrigue.
The way you speak about that book reminds me of my equally teenage love of Kerouac (Might be a virtual right of passage for my age range). I got in well enough with the small Ontario town high school librarian to gain access to the “banned books” they stowed in the back but never disposed of. Wolfe lived back there as well as a number of notable Canadian and American poets. I hope I don’t sound too assuming when I sa…
Sad day! For, those who want to spend time at work to reminiscence here are some links I found interesting: * "How Tom Wolfe Became … Tom Wolfe", a good profile from Vanity Fair , 2015: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/how-tom-wolfe-bec... * "Tom Wolfe", an early profile one year after the Kool Aid Test had been published, from The Harvard Crimson , 1969: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/5/8/tom-wolf…
“The Republican Party as now constituted is obviously too stupid to survive…. What is to be done? Of course, that was Lenin’s line and the only lucid one he ever wrote. The answer is nothing. America’s position is unassailable. We are the imperial Rome of the 3rd Millennium. Our government is a CSX train on a track. People on one side (the left) yell at it, and people on the other side (the right) yell at it, but the train’s only going to go down the track. Thank God for that. That’s why I find American politics too boring to write about. Nixon is forced from office. Does a military junta rise up? Do the tanks roll? Give me a break.” [February 28, 2000.]
^from the Vanity Fair article
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My recommendation would be to read the book, then read the book "The Devil's Candy", which is about the making of the film, and then see the movie. The Devil's Candy is about how a writer was given full, uncensored access to the production from inception to release, because everyone thought it was going to be a puff piece of a book about how great everyone was. But in reality, the author got to see how a combination…
Second "The Devil's Candy," even if you're not interested in Bonfire of the Vanities at all. I haven't read the book or seen the movie (yet) but The Devil's Candy was an incredible look into how badly things can go in Hollywood. You can probably generalize it to any large project where multiple competing interests all have a stake.
Read "The Right Stuff" for the first time recently. I didn't find myself particularly invested in the Mercury astronauts' story, but Wolfe's utterly delightful prose made it hard to pull away. Loved the mantra-like phrases that his writing would circle around: climbing the ziggurat, being left behind, single-combat warriors, the titular right stuff (among many others). Coupled with the fast-talking pace and the incre…
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Another vote for this one. Also Chuck Yeager is the most badass pilot that ever piloted anything that flies. They also made a movie out of the book. It's decent but the book is amazing.
Probably the most famous (rightly so). If you like Yeager, I highly recommend reading his memoirs - it makes The Right Stuff seem like an amateur hour aviation book.
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Second the recommendations. However for a counterpoint on Yeager’s role in the NF-104 crash described at the end of the book, see this account from a trainer involved in the program: http://www.kalimera.org/nf104/stories/stories_12.html
And this, about the investigation and a supposed cover-up of alleged pilot error by Yeager: http://www.kalimera.org/nf104/stories/stories_13.html (Although one never knows whom to believe when reading self-justifying finger pointing like this.)
"The facts are clear. Chuck Yeager proved incapable of doing the job. He was totally outside his element. He was a natural pilot who had learned by experience and feel, but never really understood stability, just ‘sensed’ how airplanes would act, but aerodynamics and space dynamics are night and day. If he was to fail, I expected it to be outside the aerodynamics region.
But not even that can excuse his accident, which was his fault, alone and was an error of bad pilot technique during normal, aerodynamic flight. His shortcoming was inability to gain and maintain the 70 degree climb angle. That required strict and delicate airplane control. No more and no less."
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I had the experience. When I see the movie first, it is alright, but when I have read the novel first, the movie is usually disappointing. (So far, I have had one exception: No Country For Old Men - I think the movie captures the book just perfectly.)
My one exception is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.