Drinking the Kool-Aid
Via Bookslut, this reassessment of Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in Columbia Journalism Review is an interesting read. Jack Shafer's thoughts are on target in most respects, but I have to wonder about his conclusions.
"Forty years from now, when Wolfe’s book, I predict, will still be in print, our grandchildren will be celebrating his role in resuscitating the narrative form," he writes.
Well, maybe.
I'm guessing the book will still be in print, but whether future generations will be turning to it is another question. I'm guessing this book fades quickly once the generation that first read and even lived it are dead and gone. I'm betting the vast majority of young people today have no idea that it exists. And whether future generations will look to it as having anything in common with the narrative form they're using seems really unlikely. There are definite similarities between some of the tenets of New Journalism and what we're seeing on the web now, but I'm not sure many people would make the connection to Wolfe. And I'm not sure he deserves much of the credit.
I re-read Acid Test not too long ago, and I also re-read On The Road around the same time. The thing that struck me was how the books lost a lot of their impact with age. I'm not sure now if it was with my age, the book's age, or both. But they didn't have nearly the impact in my 40s as they did in my teens, and Shafer's assessment of Acid Test -- that it "carries a wad of fat around its midriff" -- seems dead-on.
Posted by Bob Benz at March 24, 2006 6:27 AM