Radical Chic

"I’ve been a Tom Wolfe fan ever since my mother bought me The Electric Kool – Aid Acid Test when I was a teenager. I like nearly all of his work, particularly The Bonfire of the Vanities , but my all-time favourite is Radical Chic . It originally appeared as an essay in New York magazine, but was later published in book form alongside another essay, “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers”. It’s an account of a party given by Leonard and Felicia Bernstein for the Black Panthers in 1970 in their Park Avenue duplex, and while it’s ostensibly just a brilliant piece of satire there’s a conservative critique of New York’s liberal elite bubbling away beneath the surface. Wolfe is one of the greatest journalists of the second half of the 20th century – possibly the greatest – and in Radical Chic we find him at the very top of his game. He notices absolutely everything and takes you right into the scene he’s describing. But he’s not just a reporter without parallel. He also has a novelist’s ability to enter into the heads of those present, recording their thoughts as if he can see into their minds. This style of writing – combining reportage and social realism with a novelist’s imagination – became known as “New Journalism”. Wolfe edited a very good anthology of that name that includes pieces by all of the genre’s most celebrated practitioners, including Gay Talese. But Wolfe was its leading light, and Radical Chic its most shining example."