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ALAN TRACHTENBERG
Behind all this is a coherent vision. It came to Wolfe while he was
trying to write up a California "Teen Fair." He found in California an
"incredible combination of form plus money" taking place among teen–
agers and altering history. "Practically every style recorded in art history
is
the result of the same thing--a lot of attention to form, plus the
money to make monuments to it." But always "it has been something
\
the aristocracy has been responsible for." Think of Inigo Jones's designs,
Versailles, Palladian classicism: "These were the kinds of forms, styles,
symbols ... that influence a whole society." Now, it comes from below,
where least expected. "Suddenly classes of people whose styles of life
had been practically invisible (even to themselves?) had the money to
build monuments to their own styles. Among teen-agers, this took the
form of custom cars, the twist, the jerk, the monkey, the shake, rock
music generally, stretch pants, decal eyes--and all these things, these
teen-age styles of life, like Inigo Jones' classicism, have started having an
influence on the life of the whole country." Not only teen-agers; it is
happening allover. For example, racing has replaced baseball, and "this
shift from a fixed land sport, modeled on cricket, to this wild car sport
(a water, air, or fire sport?) . . . [my ellipses] this symbolizes a radical
change in the people as a whole."
Radical changes in "the people as a whole" is what Wolfe is after,
where his subject lies. Because nobody else seems to notice. A "built-in
class bias" gets in the way. "Nobody will even take a look at our incred–
ible new pastimes, things like stock car racing, drag racing, demolition
derbies, sports that attract five to ten million more spectators than foot–
ball, baseball and basketball each year." Presumably all those people
themselves noticed, but "nobody" means "the educated classes in this
country," those who "control the visual and printed communications
media," and who are still "plugged into what is, when one gets down to
it, an ancient, aristocratic aesthetic." But the truth is that Las Vegas is
our Versailles, the neon skyline "the new landmarks of America, the new
guideposts, the new way Americans get their bearings." The sixties were
a time, Wolfe teaches us in another book fleshing out his sociohistorical
vision, of ·"a ... Happiness Explosion." Our "serious thinkers," our "in–
tellectuals and politicians" resist this "scary" notion, that the proles are
swimming in affluence, are learning "sheer ego extension," against all the
ancient rules--the workers are learning to be happy.
Without New Journalism we might not know all this. Without New
Journalism we might go on thinking that the sixties were another decade
of war and political assassination, of activism and reaction, instead of
"the decade when manners and morals, styles of living, attitudes toward
the world changed the country more crucially than political events." The
