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:
“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learnd to dance.
Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:”
—Alexander Pope (16881744)
“Whenever Im asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological.”
—Flannery OConnor (19251964)
“For your writing and reading, let that appear when there is no need of such vanity.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)