4,116 words
Visiting an art gallery in Washington, DC long ago, I gazed at amorphous shapes for a good while. Some abstract art is good, speaking directly to the subconscious mind, but this stuff just wasn’t doing it for me. The only message I got out of it was a mild scolding from my superego about wasting a few bucks. However, one exhibit in the entire exhibit actually looked like something. That’s probably the reason why it’s the only item I remember. In fact, it was obvious that some effort went into making it, setting it apart from much of the other Entartete Kunst. (more…)
2,418 words
Tom Wolfe
The Bonfire of the Vanities
New York: Bantam, 1987
When the Left finally gets around to banning (or burning) classic novels, Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities will likely be on the top of the list. Unlike Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Bonfire’s great sin is not merely being linguistically taboo but substantively taboo as well. (more…)
June 8, 1867–April 9, 1959
2,943 words
So long, Frank Lloyd Wright
I can’t believe your song is gone so soon.
I barely learned the tune
So soon, So soon.
Architects may come and
Architects may go and
Never change your point of view.
When I run dry
I stop awhile and think of you.
— Simon and Garfunkel, 1969 (more…)
2,616 words
“Keep it up, and even if you do get my job you’ll never run this place. You’ll die in that corner office, a midlevel executive with a little bit of hair who women go home with out of pity. Want to know why? Because no one will like you.”[1]
The poohbahs of the manosphere often put me in mind of the Stalinist shop steward played by Peter Sellers in I’m All Right, Jack — (more…)
3,070 words
Tom Wolfe
Back to Blood: A Novel
New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012
Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood is a quick read despite its 700-page length, and absorbing. Of his four novels, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) about race tensions in New York City is the most famous, but his second, A Man in Full (1998), is better. (more…)
3,617 words
I stopped reading contemporary literature—works by living novelists and short story writers—when I was in my late teens or early twenties. I found it aesthetically and intellectually unrewarding. The sole exception was the work of journalist-turned-novelist Tom Wolfe, the Virginia-born, New York City-based founder and exponent of New Journalism, a type of feature reporting employing literary techniques. (more…)
4,116 words
