May 1, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Status blind
Daniel Gross acidly deconstructs Tom Wolfe's new article in Portfolio. (Full disclosure: I bought a copy, but then left it in the rental car, and am too cheap to buy another. So I haven't read the article.) But the deconstruction, as it stands, requires a little deconstruction. For one thing, his attempt to paint Wolfe as an anti-semite seems a little forced, not to say scurrilous:
The Wolfe piece is terrible. It's lazy. It has many uncheckable facts. It's clichéd, resentful, and sometimes self-parodic. And when you finish reading the piece, the faintest whiff of anti-Semitism lingers.Then there's the Jewish Question. "Many prominent hedge fund managers are Jewish," Wolfe writes, "and on Round Hill Road and Pecksland Road in Greenwich, as well as on Park and Fifth in Manhattan, there has arisen, like a breeze after dark, the sibilant sound of people with social cachet whispering to one another, behind the hand, variations on the theme, 'Some of my best friends are Jewish, but.' " A little later, Wolfe catches himself. "Mercifully, such statistical breakdowns don't exist, but it would appear that no extraordinary fraction of hedge fund managers are Jewish." Mercifully? Give me a break. And when Wolfe does name names in this piece, it sounds like an old Jewish law firm: Cohen, Loeb, Icahn, Lampert, Feinberg & Kovner. The obnoxious guy in the lede reminds us of Meyer Wolfsheim from The Great Gatsby.
To me, this reads like Tom Wolfe pointing out a not-exactly-unheard-of phenomenon--previous generation Wall Street WASPs resenting successful Jewish interlocutors--not evidence of anti-semitism on Wolfe's part. Which is not to say it isn't true, since as I say I haven't read it, but if it's there, please find us a better example.
And his closing is just ridiculous:
Here's the big difference between these masters of the universe and the ones he wrote about in the 1980s and 1990s: Wolfe doesn't seem to have any empathy for them (as he did for Sherman McCoy) or any awe or admiration for them (as he did for Charlie Croker). He seems to have only resentment. Wolfe notes with glee that posh clubs and elite museums still won't admit the arrivistes into their midst. He harps on the status anxiety that impels them to behave in such a ghastly fashion. These highly paid people are inordinately fixated on status symbols, on their place in the pecking order. They're horrid because they want to be recognized not just for professional accomplishments but for their taste and style. Or so says the dandy who tools around the Upper East Side in his white 2003 Cadillac, which, the magazine informs us, "even has white faux-suede floor mats with clear vinyl covers to keep them clean." Says Wolfe: "It's the most important thing in my life right now."
It's not just ridiculous because it's so clueless, particularly from a man who has himself been known to complain about the really enormous jump in income inequality that is largely due to the salaries of the people Wolfe is writing about. Wolfe is not the only man in New York who thinks that the changes in the financial industry in the last decade have created an increasing class of people who are changing the character of New York for the worse--and not because they are Jewish; the influx of finance people into my childhood home on the Upper West Side has if anything given the place a more Goyish hue. Their money, and penchant for combining three apartments into one, is slowly turning the island of Manhattan into one gleaming white pillar of rich people from stem to stern. I don't want to stop it, mind you, even if I could; but I don't have to enjoy the destruction of the city I grew up in, which had different types of people doing different types of things, in a place they actually lived in, rather than resting there between trips to the office and the country house.
But that is an aside. Because that's not the reason that my jaw literally dropped when I read Mr Gross's complaint. I mean, okay, so finance and economics journalists are not, like, the hippest scriveners around. To be frank, the word "nerd" gets tossed around a lot. And it's not like I personally know anything about cars, or have my fingers on the pulse of New York's elite consumer culture.
But I do watch cable like, once a month. Which is enough for me to know that a "white 2003 Cadillac", even one with "white faux-suede floor mats" is not a status item for anyone east of Dubuque. Particularly when it comes with "clear vinyl covers" for the mats. To anyone with enough taste to remove the tags from their clothes before wearing, this should scream "Grandma" more than "Grand Cru". Tom Wolfe is not driving a white Cadillac to cultivate a reputation for taste and style; he's doing it to cultivate a reputation for flaming eccentricity, which is one of the things that sells his persona, and his books.
Frankly, I'm stonkered. And to be honest, unable to shake the image of Daniel Gross trying to curry favour with the hedge fund managers he writes about by donning say, a Wolfesque white fedora . . . with one of his grandmother's rain bonnets tied jauntily around it to keep it pristine.
Posted by Jane Galt at May 1, 2007 5:06 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksI was just reading that piece (and had the same thought about the 2003 Cadillac), and was reminded of a conversation I recently had with my wife, who was first reading Bonfire of the Vanities:
One of Wolfe's big conceits is that he meticulously researches all walks of life and then uses his novels to educate the reader about various American subcultures and lifestyles. In fact, almost all of his depictions of pop culture are either utterly obvious, decades out of date, or just ludicrously wrong. the only exception [I said to my wife] is when he writes about very rich white Protestants.
But is even that true? Or is it that he doesn't do any better than when he informs us that young black males wear very loose-fitting clothing, but I have no experience with very rich white people who aren't Jewish?
Jane, I thought it was when you were growing up that the city was destroyed, with its lofty crime rates, fleeing population, shrinking property values, and general seediness?
Well Jane, apparently you've never been to Metro Detroit's fabulous East Side where even a White 2001 Cadillac is serious status symbol. Especially one with “white faux-suede floor mats”.
Yeah, if you are going to skewer an author or his works, one is well advised to stick the skewer into something that the target actually wrote. I'll also note that criticizing an author for failing to flesh out a full depiction of character, in a short magazine piece, in the same manner that the author accomplished in the novels he wrote, is more than a little silly. Sheesh.
The killer line from Gross's article:
"For every grasping, snarling, self-promoting hedge-fund manager, there's an anonymous guy just trying to make a living"
Man the cringe boats, you'd have to be an UTTER weirdo to write a line like that. How about "a guy who for very good reasons wants to remain anonymous while earning the living of 20,000 people in a year".
Full disclosure: I bought a copy, but then left it in the rental car, and am too cheap to buy another.
Sunk costs are sunk costs.
He actually hired Unique Autosports (which does a lot of customized celeb cars) to do it.
But yup, I would guess he's aiming for eccentric and not pimped.
"... previous generation Wall Street WASPs resenting successful Jewish interlocutors ..."
"Interlocutors"? Did you mean to write "interlopers"?
Wolfe's pimped out Caddy.
That link nicely illustrates my point. "A Japanese econobox in the novel is named the Bitosushi"?!? How oblivious would a reader have to be to not laugh out loud at him?
Did someone say something about the pix of Jane in the Abercrombie&Fitch miniskirt?
Though upper-middle class and upper class whites have abandoned domestic luxury cars in favor of foreign, the same cannot be said of the nation's African-American community. Every time I see an Escalade it's chromed out and rolling on dubs, and there is a non-white person behind the wheel. Same with Caddy sedans, though they aren't nearly as popular as Escalades.
Y'all need to recognize that white folks aren't they only rich people around. Or rather, the only people who buy luxury cars as status symbols.
Geez, I work in the hedge fund biz, and Tom Wolfe has got it spot on with these guys. Their penis envy is about their wallets. It's about who can blow the biggest wad of dough on something so extravagant that the story becomes an urban legend--as in the supposed million dollar "liar's poker" bet between John Gutfreund and John Merriweather at Salomon Bros. in the '80s.
Daniel Gross and others, who style themselves sensitive to "the faintest whiff of" thoughts deemed contemptible are petty O'Briens who seek to install a censor everywhere there is an active mind.
I ran across this little anecdote about
the poet Gershom Gorenberg whose poetry
submissions to "Tikkun" magazine had been
censored by the editor who said; "I am not
fond of how you write about women."
Gorenberg searched his poetry for whatever
it was that was offensive to the editor
and then realized "...the inquisitor is
succeeding admirably: the very vagueness
of the charge has driven me to search
for my sins, incriminate myself, confess."
Men, Women and "The Net"
by Richard Prosapio
http://www.menweb.org/dpinet.htm
Thought policing by whisper campaign, character assassination, and guilt-tripping is the gimmick used by people who want to condemn others but lack actual evidence of actual behavior that's condemnatory.
In fact, almost all of his depictions of pop culture are either utterly obvious, decades out of date, or just ludicrously wrong.
You are aware that Bonfire was written in 1987, right?
And I'd be careful with the "obvious" part, too - It only seems obvious because he writes about something, and then reality catches up a few years later. It's hard to remember now that he wrote "Bonfire" before stuff like the Tawana Brawley story or Crown Heights or Drexel Burnham, and in a few years it will be hard to remember he wrote "Charlotte Simmons" before the Duke Lacrosse case...
For anyone who lost their copy:
http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2007/04/16/The-Pirate-Pose?page=1
You are aware that Bonfire was written in 1987, right?
I am. That was the reaction I had when it came out, and his subsequent books have only reinforced it.
It only seems obvious because he writes about something, and then reality catches up a few years later.
That's a fair point, as far as the big picture stuff is concerned. It's the "meticulously researched" details that I was talking about, but that's an excellent point.
I really enjoyed Wolfe's books "The Painted Word" and "The Right Stuff", and an article he wrote "Jousting with Sam & Charlie". These are all nonfiction, however. Fictionalizing reality is dangerous business.
'Though upper-middle class and upper class whites have abandoned domestic luxury cars in favor of foreign...'
Interestingly, GM is now advertising on Rush Limbaugh. They even gave him one of their new Cadillacs to drive.
He was always unable to get any mass marketed products to sell on his show. The companies were afraid of the backlash. Instead of Coke or Pepsi, he'd get Snapple (and make the owners rich).
' and in a few years it will be hard to remember he wrote "Charlotte Simmons" before the Duke Lacrosse case...'
Indeed. It will be hard to remember "Charlotte Simmons" at all, let alone who wrote it.
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