The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe
"The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," authored by Tom Wolfe, is a seminal work that pioneered the genre of New Journalism, characterized by its subjective and personal style. The anthology consists of various essays that explore American culture, particularly focusing on the extravagant and often eccentric aspects of life in the 1970s. Wolfe's writing captures the spirit of places like Las Vegas, showcasing his unique, satirical voice through deliberate excess in language and form, as seen in the repetitive and playful use of words. His work delves into celebrity culture, examining figures ranging from Hollywood stars to stock-car racers, and highlights the interplay between societal status and individual identity.
Through Wolfe's lens, readers encounter a vibrant tapestry of cultural phenomena, from customized cars to the peculiarities of the demolition derby, reflecting a broader fascination with the American experience. The essays feature a mix of high and low culture, revealing Wolfe's interest in both mainstream icons and overlooked personalities. Despite the focus on celebrities, Wolfe occasionally shifts his attention to marginalized voices, albeit infrequently. This exploration of cultural eccentricity and status remains a compelling invitation for readers interested in the social dynamics and cultural narratives of the time.
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1965
Type of work: Essays
The Work
This pioneering anthology established a model for the personal, subjective style of New Journalism. The first essay attempts to capture the spirit of the city of Las Vegas and is typical of Wolfe’s self-conscious satirical method. Fascinated by the vulgar spectacle of Las Vegas, Wolfe was able to fashion a verbal style to suit the substance, a style that is itself excessive and prolix, repeating key words and motifs. The essay herniates itself in the first paragraph, for example, where the word “hernia” is repeated fifty-seven times, catching the babble of a casino zombie at the craps table. Wolfe piles words on top of one another to create a verbal cascade; he fractures syntax for effect; he overpunctuates, overloading his sentences, as in the title of his lead essay, “Las Vegas (what?) Las Vegas (can’t hear you! too noisy) Las Vegas!!!”
At the end of the book, Wolfe describes “The Big League Complex” of New Yorkers with the wonderment of an outsider. Years later, in The Bonfire of the Vanities, he reworks this theme from the vantage point of an insider who has achieved status and tasted its hollowness. Wolfe later coined the phrase “The Me Decade” to describe the 1970’s, after having helped to create the style of that decade. Each tirade of excess, every verbal spasm of his decadent and psychedelic style, is designed to capture the reader’s attention with the unstated but insistent plea: Look at me!
Throughout the book, Wolfe is fascinated by cultural eccentricity. In “Clean Fun at Riverhead,” he profiles Lawrence Mendelsohn, who created and then promoted the notion of the demolition derby as a new “sport.” Other selections reveal a fixation on automobiles and car culture. The title essay concerns customized cars and the celebrities of this subculture, such as Hollywood customizer George Barns, who paints his “creations” with “Kandy Kolors.” One of the book’s longest and most effective pieces, “The Last American Hero,” profiles stock-car racing celebrity Junior Johnson, explaining the man, his sport, and its cultural context in such a way as to convince the reader that Johnson may be convincingly heroic.
Junior Johnson is a regional celebrity. Elsewhere in the book, Wolfe profiles national celebrities: motion-picture star Cary Grant, in “Loverboy of the Bourgeoisie,” for example, in which Wolfe contends that Grant is “an exciting bourgeois” rather than “an aristocratic motion picture figure,” and heavyweight champion Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), in “The Marvelous Mouth,” famous for making vulgar and extravagant claims about other contenders such as Sonny Liston.
Most of the book concerns celebrities and status. Many of the celebrities have faded into obscurity, such as celebrity model Baby Jane Holzer, “The Girl of the Year,” once the darling of New York café society, now hardly a pop-cultural footnote. Perhaps more enduring is celebrity disc jockey Murray the K, “The Fifth Beatle,” the “king of the Hysterical Disc Jockeys,” famous for inventing a much-imitated goofy announcing style, who managed to befriend the Beatles during their first American tour and gained a measure of immortality by fortunate association.
Wolfe is fascinated by the offbeat. In “Purveyor of the Public Life,” he profiles Robert Harrison, the publisher of “the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world,” Confidential (1952-1958), and a specialist in what Wolfe calls the “aesthetique du schlock.” Wolfe cheerfully explores culture, high and low. On one hand, he treats rock-and-roll magnate Phil Spector (“The First Tycoon of Teen”); on the other, he takes on Huntington Hartford and his Gallery of Modern Art (“The Luther of Columbus Circle”) and the Museum of Modern Art (“The New Art Gallery Society”).
Emblems of status abound: an executive’s brown Chesterfield and his “Madison Avenue crash helmet” (in “Putting Daddy On”), fashionable interior decorators (“The Woman Who Has Everything”), tailor-made suits (“The Secret Vice”), and exclusive neighborhoods (“The Big League Complex”). Like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wolfe is fascinated by the rich and powerful. Only rarely does he pay attention to the underclass, the have-nots, as he does in “The Voices of Village Square.” Those voices come from the Women’s House of Detention at 10 Greenwich Avenue. This is the author’s choice, and it is apparently even his fixation.
Bibliography
Edwards, Thomas R. “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” The New York Review of Books 35 (February 4, 1988): 8-9.
Ewers, Justin. “Wolfe on Campus [Thomas Wolfe and his new novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons].” U.S. News & World Report 137, no. 17 (November 15, 2004): 78-80.
Kamp, David. “The White Stuff.” Vanity Fair 457 (September, 1998): 284-287.
Leonard, John. “Delirious New York.” The Nation 245 (November 28, 1987): 636-640.
McGrath, Charles. “Wolfe’s World.” The New York Times Magazine, October 31, 2004, 34-39.
Powers, Thomas. “Wolfe in Orbit.” Commonweal 106 (October 12, 1979): 551-552.
Will, George F. “Tom Wolfe’s Rooftop Yawp [A Man in Full].” Newsweek 132, no. 21 (November 23, 1998): 96.
Wolfe, Tom, and E. W. Johnson, eds. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.