Writing
All but two of the stories in the book were written in 1965 and 1966, during the ten months after the publication of The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. During this period Wolfe spent extensive time with many of his subjects, including Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy Magazine (who Wolfe famously compared to The Great Gatsby); Carol Doda, a stripper who helped popularize breast-implants; and the surfers of the pump house.
Other subjects Wolfe profiles in the book include actress Natalie Wood, the New York Hilton, the visionary media-theorist Marshall McLuhan and various socialites of New York. The essays collectively tell the story of the new status symbols and lifestyles of the 1960s and how the culture was changing from the traditional social hierarchies of the time. The success of the book cemented Wolfe as one of his generation's most prominent social critics.
Read more about this topic: The Pump House Gang
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“For it is not the bare words but the scope of the writer that gives the true light, by which any writing is to be interpreted; and they that insist upon single texts, without considering the main design, can derive no thing from them clearly.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.”
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