Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers [Paperback]

"Radical Chic" is the story of a party thrown by Leonard Bernstein to raise money for the Black Panthers; specifically, for their legal defenses. Wolfe lets their own words and actions at this typical party be the objects by which these elite, Manhattanite, "limousine liberals" completely humiliate themselves. The lengths to which the Bernstein crowd goes--from whom they employ to what they wear--to remove anything that could possibly be viewed as "intolerant" is simply comical to almost anyone except for this crowd. As one who currently lives in New York City, this book was hilarious to read since any differences between the crowd Wolfe satirized in 1970 and the Manhattanite left-wing elitists of today, are virtually non-existent. As "Radical Chic" closes, this crowd is sent scrambling to distance themselves from the Panthers, not because the Panthers were anarchist street thugs, but because they are shown to be virulent racists, especially regarding anti-Semitism. Upper class Leftists, scrambling to distance themselves from the anti-Semitic comments of black leaders they once supported politically... my, how things have changed.

While "Radical Chic" is the longer and usually more famous of the two essays, "Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers" is Wolfe writing at a better, more colorful level than in "Radical Chic", where the essay's subjects do most of the talking. In "Flak Catchers" Wolfe again takes on the topic of angry minorities and their more affluent supporters in the white community. This time, Wolfe uses the racial melting-pot in San Francisco to show the numerous "impoverished" groups uniting to make themselves seen and heard by the local government. Wolfe demonstrates his perspicacity in putting a human face on these groups and objectively showing their personal motives for giving the white government office workers (the Flak Catchers), an occasional shakedown. But here too, Wolfe is not commenting on the minority group nearly as much as he is on the white, middle class, Northern Californians that seek to appease these groups at any cost. His cynical view of these people comes not from disagreement with their wanting to help the less fortunate, but from their complete phoniness, which ultimately blinds them to the acts and words of some nefarious characters.

As Wolfe writes in "Flak Catchers": "You'd turn on the TV, and there would be some dude you had last seen just hanging out on the corner with the porkpie hat scrunched down over his eyes and the toothpick nodding on his lips--and there he was now on the screen, a leader, a 'black spokesman,' with whites in the round-shouldered suits and striped neckties holding microphones up to his mouth and waiting for The Word to fall from his lips."

Exactly.

This party on January 14, 1970 (Woodstock and the flag on the moon are dissipating euphorium; Altamont is a fresh bruise) brings crafty, radical, violent Black Panthers into the lair of America's great conductor Leonard Bernstein for a fund-raiser.

It's all here: the saccharine philosophizing, the goofy earnestness, the willful suspension of reasoning, even the seeds of the increasingly acrimonious relationship between America's blacks and Jews.

Wolfe adroitly draws the scene for us:

"[Black Panther speaker] Cox seizes the moment: `Our Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton, has said if we can't find a meaningful life.. you know... maybe we can have a meaningful death... and one reason the power structure fears the Black Panthers is that they know the Black Panthers are ready to die for what they believe in, and a lot of us have already died.'
Lenny seems like a changed man. He looks up at Cox and says, `When you walk into this house, into this building' - and he gestures vaguely as if to take it all in, the moldings, the sconces, the Roquefort morsels rolled in crushed nuts, the servants, the elevator attendant and the doormen downstairs in their white dickeys, the marble lobby, the brass struts on the marquee out front - "when you walk into this house, you must feel infuriated!'
Cox looks embarrasses. `No, man... I manage to overcome that... That's a personal thing...'...
`Well,' says Lenny, `it makes me mad!'

The self-loathing, the fashionable decrial of one's own self, yet the never quite-so-brave as to deny it. As this is a short, short work, I can't reveal too much more without giving away the entire plotline, which is awfully enjoyable for you to watch unfold.

I will say that this is Tom Wolfe writing at its boldest, full-throated best. Wolfe has a way of fetishizing a particular object and using it to illuminate the differences among his subjects. He does this to great effect here with the "Roquefort morsels rolled in crushed crumbs" mentioned above, and it is a delight to watch this talented polemicist run this device through its paces.

All the blurbs on the back of this book deem this a "sociological" work, which must have been a Word-in-Vogue at the time of its publishing. This is a hell of a lot more interesting than any sociology, and more important in its way too.

Now, let's be clear on what you're getting here - this is basically a long magazine article that even with small book format, generous margins and gutter-sized line spacing only runs to four score and two pages. Hence the need to include the entirely adequate "Mau-mauing the Flak-catchers" to bulk it up to a more decorous triple-digit page count.

Nonetheless, this is an enjoyable, easy-breezy read that you can knock off on a short plane ride. I read it in conjunction with Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House over a weekend, and I'd suggest getting all three.

This is probably Wolfe's best work as a pamphleteer and certainly his most famous. A fine, devious, dramatic work, this little tome will please the lover of politics, culture, gossip or Americana immensely.