Tom Wolfe-Fashionista Of
His Own Kind-And A Hell Of A Writer When The Deal Went Down Has Cashed His
Check
By Bart Webber
I had been, strangely
enough, in La Jolla out in California attending yet another writers’ conference
which seems to be the makings of my days these days, attending writers’
conferences that is instead of taking pen to paper or rather fingers to word
processor keyboard, when I heard Tom Wolfe had cashed his check. “Cashed his
check” a term (along with synonymous “cashed his ticket”) grabbed from memory
bank as a term used when I was “on the bum” hanging out in hobo jungle camps
and the whole trail of flop houses and Salvation Army digs to signify that a
kindred had passed to the great beyond. Was now resting in some better place
that a stinking stew-bitten, flea –bitten, foul-aired and foul-person place. No
more worries about the next flop, the next jug of cheapjack wine, the next
run-in with vicious coppers and railroad bulls, and the next guy who was ready
to rip whatever you had off to feed his own sullen addiction.
By the way this is not
Thomas Wolfe of You Can’t Go Home Again,
Look Homeward, Angels, etc. but the
writer, maybe journalist is a better way to put the matter of tons of
interesting stuff from acid trips in the 1960s hanging with Ken Kesey and his
various tribes of merry pranksters, the Hell’s Angels, drifters, grifters and
midnight sifters, to marveled space flights in the 1970s to Wall Street in the
reckless 1980 and back who had cashed his check. The strange part of the
“strangely enough” mentioned above was that on Monday May 14th 2018,
the day he died, I was walking along La Jolla Cove and commenting to my
companion without knowing his fate that Tom Wolfe had made the La Jolla surfing
scene in the early 1960s come alive with his tale of the Pump House Gang and
related stories about the restless California tribes, you know those Hell’s
Angels, Valley hot-rod freaks and the like who parents had migrated west from dustbowl
Okies and Arkies to start a new life out in Eden. These next generation though
lost in a thousand angsts and alienation not having to fight for every breath
of fresh air (with the exception of the Angels who might as well have stayed in
the Okies and McAllister Prison which would have been their fate.
I don’t know how Tom
Wolfe did at the end as a writer, or toward the end, when things seemed to
glaze over and became very homogenized, lacked the verve of hard ass 1960s,
1970s, and 1980s times. Although I do note that he did a very although I note
he did an interesting take on the cultural life at the Army base at Fort Bragg
down in North Carolina in a book of essays around the theme of hooking up. That
hooking up angle a sign that social cohesiveness in the age of the Internet was
creating some strange rituals. Know this those pound for pound in his prime he along
with Hunter Thompson could write the sociology of the land with simple flair
and kept this guy, me, flipping the pages in the wee hours of the morning. RIP,
Tom Wolfe, RIP.
Zack James’ comment June, 2017:
Sometimes you just have to follow the bouncing ball like in
those old time sing along cartoons they used to have back in say the 1950s,the
time I remember them from, on Saturday afternoon matinees at the old now long
gone Stand Theater in my growing up town of North Adamsville. Follow me for a
minute here I won’t be long. Earlier this spring my oldest brother, Alex, took
attended a conference in San Francisco which he has done periodically for
years. While there he noticed an advertisement on a bus for something called
the Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. That
ad immediately caught his attention he had been out there that year and had
participated in those events at the urging of his friend Peter Paul Markin who
was something of a holy goof (a Jack Kerouac term of art), a low rent prophet,
and a street criminal all in one. When Alex got back to the East after having
attended the exhibition he got in contact with me to help him, and the still
standing corner boys who also had gone out West at Markin’s urging to put
together a tribute booklet honoring Markin and the whole experience.
After completing that project, or maybe while completing it
I kept on thinking about the late Hunter S. Thompson who at one time was the
driving force behind gonzo journalism and had before his suicide about a decade
ago been something of a muse to me. At first my thoughts were about how
Thompson would have taken the exhibition at the de Young since a lot of what he
wrote about in the 1960s and 1970s was where the various counter-cultural
trends were, or were not, going. But then as the current national political
situation in America in the Trump Age has turned to crap, to craziness and
straight out weirdness I began to think about how Thompson would have handled
the 24/7/365 craziness these days since he had been an unremitting searing
critic of another President of the United States who also had low-life
instincts, one Richard Milhous Nixon.
The intertwining of the two stands came to head recently
over the fired FBI director James Comey hearings where he essentially said that
the emperor had no clothes. So I have been inserting various Thompson-like
comments in an occasional series I am running in various on-line publications-Even The President Of The United States
Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked-Tales From The White House Bunker. And will
continue to overlap the two-Summer of Love and Age of Trump for as long as it seems
relevant. So there you are caught up. Ifs not then I have included hopefully
for the last time the latest cross-over Thompson idea.
************
Zack James comment, Summer of 2017
Maybe it says something about the times we live in, or maybe
in this instance happenstance or, hell maybe something in the water but certain
things sort of dovetail every now and again. I initially started this
commentary segment after having written a longest piece for my brother and his
friends as part of a small tribute booklet they were putting together about my and
their takes on the Summer of Love, 1967. That event that my brother, Alex, had
been knee deep in had always interested me from afar since I was way too young
to have appreciated what was happening in San Francisco in those Wild West days.
What got him motivated to do the booklet had been an exhibit at the de Young
Art Museum in Golden Gate Park where they were celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the events of that summer with a look at the music, fashion,
photography and exquisite poster art which was created then just as vivid
advertising for concerts and “happenings” but which now is legitimate artful
expression.
That project subsequently got me started thinking about the
late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, the driving force behind a new way of
looking at and presenting journalism which was really much closer to the nub of
what real reporting was about. Initially I was interested in some of Thompson’s
reportage on what was what in San Francisco as he touched the elbows of those
times having spent a fair amount of time working on his seminal book on the
Hell’s Angels while all hell was breaking out in Frisco town. Delved into with
all hands and legs the high points and the low, the ebb which he located
somewhere between the Chicago Democratic Convention fiasco of the summer of
1968 and the hellish Rollins Stones Altamont concert of 1969.
Here is what is important today though, about how the dots
get connected out of seemingly random occurrences. Hunter Thompson also made
his mark as a searing no holds barred mano y mano reporter of the rise and
fall, of the worthy demise of one Richard Milhous Nixon at one time President
of the United States and a common low-life criminal of ill-repute. Needless to
say today, the summer of 2107, in the age of one Donald Trump, another
President of the United States and common low-life criminal begs the obvious
question of what the sorely missed Doctor Gonzo would have made of the whole
process of the self-destruction of another American presidency, or a damn good
run at self-destruction. So today and maybe occasionally in the future there
will be some intertwining of commentary about events fifty years ago and today.
Below to catch readers up to speed is the most recent “homage” to Hunter
Thompson. And you too I hope will ask the pertinent question. Hunter where are
you when we need, desperately need, you.
*******
Zack James comment, Summer of 2017
You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S
Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the
neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back
in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. (Walking
with the king not about walking with any king or Doctor King but being so high
on drugs, your choice, that commin clay experiences fall by the way side. In
the times of this 50th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of
Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and
in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s
Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s
place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place, where many walked with
the king, if you prefer, and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were
welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the
night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s
coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the
quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he
would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left
Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would
have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no
that is not done in proper society, in high art society these days) at the de
Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period
showing until August 20th of this year.
Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre
weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with
the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one
Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was
running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like
some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the
sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol
Hill and saying out loud the emperor has no clothes and would not know the
truth if it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But
perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted
other bullshit would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times
when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not
make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly
hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the
top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs who like their forbears would
stop at nothing he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from
all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for
now
DVD Review
The Wild One, Marlon Brando, Lee Marvin, produced by Stanley Kramer,1954
Okay here is the book of genesis, the motorcycle book of genesis, or at least my motorcycle book of genesis. But, before I get to that let me make about seventy–six disclaimers. First, the whys and wherefores of the motorcycle culture, except on those occasions when they become subject to governmental investigation or impact some cultural phenomena, is outside the purview of the leftist politics that dominate the commentary in this space. There is no Marxoid political line, as a rule, on such activity, nor should there be. Those exceptions include when motorcyclists, usually under the rubric of “bad actor” motorcycle clubs, like the famous (or infamous) Oakland, California-based Hell’s Angels are generally harassed by the cops and we have to defend their right to be left alone (you know, those "helmet laws", and the never-failing pull-over for "driving while biker") or, like when the Angels were used by the Rolling Stones at Altamont and that ill-advised decision represented a watershed in the 1960s counter-cultural movement. Or, more ominously, from another angle when such lumpen formations form the core hell-raisers of anti-immigrant, anti-communist, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-black liberation fascistic demonstrations and we are compelled, and rightly so, to go toe to toe with them. Scary yes, necessary yes, bikes or no bikes.
Second, in the interest of full disclosure I own no stock, or have any other interest, in Harley-Davidson, or any other motorcycle company. Third, I do not now, or have I ever belonged to a motorcycle club or owned a motorcycle, although I have driven them, or, more often, on back of them on occasion. Fourth, I do not now, knowingly or unknowingly, although I grew up in working class neighborhoods where bikes and bikers were plentiful, hang with such types. Fifth, the damn things and their riders are too noisy, despite the glamour and “freedom” of the road associated with them. Sixth, and here is the “kicker”, I have been, endlessly, fascinated by bikes and bike culture as least since early high school, if not before, and had several friends who “rode”. Well that is not seventy-six but that is enough for disclaimers.
Okay, as to genesis, motorcycle genesis. Let’s connect the dots. A couple of years ago, and maybe more, as part of a trip down memory lane, the details of which do not need detain us here, I did a series of articles on various world-shaking, earth-shattering subjects like high school romances, high school hi-jinks, high school dances, high school Saturday nights, and most importantly of all, high school how to impress the girls( or boys, for girls, or whatever sexual combinations fit these days, but you can speak for yourselves, I am standing on this ground). In short, high school sub-culture, American-style, early 1960s branch, although the emphasis there, as it will be here, is on that social phenomena as filtered through the lenses of a working class town, a seen better days town at that, my growing up wild-like-the-weeds town.
One of the subjects worked over in that series was the search, the eternal search I might add, for the great working class love song. Not the Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel generic mush that could play in Levittown, Shaker Heights or La Jolla as well as Youngstown or Moline. No, a song that, without blushing, one could call our own, our working class own, one that the middle and upper classes might like but would not put on their dance cards. As my offering to this high-brow debate I offered a song by written by Englishman Richard Thompson (who folkies, and folk rockers, might know from his Fairport Convention days, very good days, by the way), Vincent Black Lightning, 1952. (See lyrics below.) Without belaboring the point the gist of this song is the biker romance, British version, between outlaw biker James and black-leathered, red-headed Molly. Needless to say such a tenuous lumpen existence as James leads to keep himself “biked" cuts short any long term “little white house with picket fence” ending for the pair. And we do not need such a boring finish. For James, after losing the inevitable running battle with the police, on his death bed bequeaths his bike, his precious “Vincent Black Lightning”, to said Molly. His bike, man. His bike. Is there any greater love story, working class love story, around? No, this makes West Side Story lyrics and a whole bunch of other such songs seem like so much cornball nonsense. His bike, man. Wow! Kudos, Brother Thompson.
Needless to say that exploration was not the end, but rather the beginning of thinking through the great American night bike experience. And, of course, for this writer that means going to the books, the films and the memory bank to find every seemingly relevant “biker” experience. Thus, readers of this space were treated to reviews of such classic motorcycle sagas as “gonzo” journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels and other, later Rolling Stone magazine printed “biker” stories and Tom Wolfe’ Hell Angel’s-sketched Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and other articles about California subset youth culture that drove Wolfe’s work in the old days). And to the hellish Rolling Stones (band) Hell’s Angels “policed” Altamont concert in 1969. And, as fate would have it, with the passing of actor/director Dennis Hooper, the 1960s classic biker/freedom/ seeking the great American night film, Easy Rider. And from Easy Rider to the “max daddy” of them all, tight-jeaned, thick leather-belted, tee-shirted, engineer-booted, leather-jacketed, taxi-driver-capped (hey, that’s what it reminds me of), side-burned, chain-linked wielding, hard-living, alienated, but in the end really just misunderstood, Johnny, aka, Marlon Brando, in The Wild One.
Okay, we will cut to the chase on the plot. Old Johnny and his fellow “outlaw” motorcycle club members are out for some weekend “kicks” after a hard week’s non-work (as far as we can figure out, work was marginal for many reasons, as Hunter Thompson in Hell’s Angels noted, to biker existence, the pursue of jack-rolling, armed robbery or grand theft auto careers probably running a little ahead) out in the sunny California small town hinterlands.(They are still heading out there today, the last time I noticed, in the Southern California high desert, places like Twenty-Nine Palms and Joshua Tree.)
And naturally, when the boys (and they are all boys here, except for couple of “mamas”, one spurned by Johnny, in a break-away club led by jack-in-the-box jokester, Lee Marvin as Chino) hit one small town they, naturally, after sizing up the local law, head for the local café (and bar). And once one mentions cafes in small towns in California (or Larry McMurtry’s West Texas, for that matter), then hard-working, trying to make it through the shift, got to get out of this small town and see the world, dreamy-eyed, naïve (yes, naive) sheriff-daughtered young waitress, Kathy, (yes, and hard-working, its tough dealing them off the arm in these kind of joints, or elsewhere) Johnny trap comes into play. Okay, now you know, even alienated, misunderstood, misanthropic, cop-hating (an additional obstacle given said waitress’s kinships) boy Johnny needs, needs cinematically at least, to meet a girl who understands him.
The development of that young hope, although hopeless, boy meets girl romance relationship, hither and yon, drives the plot. Natch. Oh, and along the way the boys, after a few thousand beers, as boys, especially girl-starved biker boys, will, at the drop of a hat start to systematically tear down the town, off-handedly, for fun. Needless to say, staid local burghers (aka “squares”) seeing what amount to them is their worst 1950s “communist” invasion nightmare, complete with murder, mayhem and rapine, (although that “C” word was not used in the film, nor should it have been) are determined to “take back” their little town. A few fights, forages, casualities, fatalities, and forgivenesses later though, still smitten but unquenched and chaste Johnny (and his rowdy crowd) and said waitress part, wistfully. The lesson here, for the kids in the theater audience, is that biker love outside bikerdom is doomed. For the adults, the real audience, the lesson: nip the “terrorists” in the bud (call in the state cops, the national guard, the militia, the 82nd Airborne, The Strategic Air Command, NATO, hell, even the weren't we buddies in the war Red Army , but nip it, fast when they come roaming through Amityville, Archer City, or your small town).
After that summary you can see what we are up against. This is pure fantasy Hollywood cautionary tale on a very real 1950s phenomena, “outlaw” biker clubs, mainly in California, but elsewhere as well. Hunter Thompson did yeoman’s work in his Hell’s Angels to “discover” who these guys were and what drove them, beyond drugs, sex, rock and roll (and, ya, murder and mayhem, the California prison system was a “home away from home”). In a sense the “bikers” were the obverse of the boys (again, mainly) whom Tom Wolfe, in many of his early essays, was writing about and who were (a) forming the core of the surfers on the beaches from Malibu to La Jolla and, (b) driving the custom car/hot rod/drive-in centered (later mall-centered) cool, teenage girl–impressing, car craze night in the immediate post-World War II great American Western sunny skies and pleasant dream drift (physically and culturally). Except those Wolfe guys were the “winners”. The “bikers” were Nelson Algren’s “losers”, the dead-enders who didn’t hit the gold rush, the Dove Linkhorns (aka the Arkies and Okies who in the 1930s populated John Steinbeck’s Joad saga, The Grapes Of Wrath). Not cool, iconic Marlin-Johnny but hellbend then-Hell Angels leader, Sonny Barger.
And that is why in the end, as beautifully sullen and misunderstood the alienated Johnny was, and as wholesomely rowdy as his gang was before demon rum took over, this was not the real “biker: scene, West or East. Now I lived, as a teenager in a working class, really marginally working poor, neighborhood that I have previously mentioned was the leavings of those who were moving up in post-war society. That neighborhood was no more than a mile from the central headquarters of Boston's local Hell’s Angels (although they were not called that, I think it was Deathheads, or something like that). I got to see these guys up close as they rallied at various spots on our local beach or “ran” through our neighborhood on their way to some crazed action. The leader had all of the charisma of Marlon Brando’s thick leather belt. His face, as did most of the faces, spoke of small-minded cruelties (and old prison pallors) not of misunderstood youth. And their collective prison records (as Hunter Thompson also noted about the Angels) spoke of “high” lumpenism. And that takes us back to the beginning about who, and what, forms one of the core cohorts for a fascist movement in this country, the sons of Sonny Barger. Then we will need to rely on our Marxist politics, and other such weapons.
*************
ARTIST: Richard Thompson
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Lyrics and Chords
Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Box Hill they did ride
/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /
/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /
Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride
Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride
Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I've got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride
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