Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine

by Tom Wolfe

If generals prepare for the last war, the politicians run on yesterday's issues. Never was this truer than in the 1970s. Our elected elite couldn't get a handle on the times.

But Tom Wolfe could. In fact he gave the era its name -- "The Me Decade." And like an artist briskly painting the passing scene, he captured it in stories and essays. This collection includes the best -- "Pornoviolence," "Funky Chic," "The Man Who Always Peaked Too Soon" plus the story for which this collection is named.

"Wolfe sees it fresh and tells it true...great vivacity and intelligence." (The Observer)

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Journalism, Short Stories, 20th Century, Literature, Political Science

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Wolfe was educated at Washington and Lee Universities and also at Yale, where he received a PhD in American studies.

Tom Wolfe spent his early days as a Washington Post beat reporter, where his free-association, onomatopoetic style would later become the trademark of New Journalism. In books such as The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe delves into the inner workings of the mind, writing about the unconscious decisions people make in their lives. His attention to eccentricities of human behavior and language and to questions of social status are considered unparalleled in the American literary canon.


He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Tom Wolfe is also famous for coining and defining the term fiction-absolute .

http://us.macmillan.com/author/tomwolfe

Reviews

[Liza Rodimtseva · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. The flamboyant prose of Tom Wolfe and peers like Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs and Ken Kesey - the cohort of 1970's 'gonzo journalism' - has lately fallen out of critical favor. Writers whose work is so strongly flavored by their own outsize persona, so much so that no matter what they write about their real subject seems to be themselves, can't be trusted. Tom Wolfe's subject is the 70's et al. but his real subject is undoubtedly always himself and his own opinions. Undoubtedly also, it is wildly entertaining, complete with the author's own groovy illustrations. Wolfe is somehow both prescient and myopic. He doesn't see the long-term implications of what he writes about. To him, things like the movement for Black Power and Women's Liberation are just fads of the Me Decade. However, in many of these collected essays, he describes social changes that may have seemed faddish at the time, but which have taken deep root over the years, and many of them, unlike women's rights, aren't necessarily for the good. He describes the seeds of the 'wellness' and 'self-improvement' movement, which has become not only a bazillion-dollar cottage industry, but also a collective psychological turn towards monetized selfishness. Of course, no one could have predicted that the 70's catchphrase "Let's Talk About Me" would become the basis of so much social, economic and political discourse in just one generation.

[C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey Tom Wolfe I used to think you were a bullshit bougie blow hard, who thinks it's cool to be a conservative intellectual, when being a conservative had very little to do with how you felt about Jesus, and more about your views on small government.

You still live on the Upper East Side in your tent of luxury.

But this collection was actually very good. I found some of the style a bit gimmicky and dated, but I really enjoyed most of the stories. Good job.

[Mark Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom Wolfe’s 1976 book Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, is a collection of short essays of the sort that had made Wolfe famous a decade earlier. The contents are quite varied, ranging from the illustrated story “The Man Who Always Peaked Too Soon,” to Wolfe’s first venture into fiction, the short story “The Commercial,” and including one of Wolfe’s classic capturing-the-zeitgeist pieces, “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening.” Mauve Gloves & Madmen features excellent writing from Wolfe, although the book is somewhat uneven.

The title piece is an odd, fictional fragment of an author’s reckoning of his personal finances. The seemingly inscrutable title is clarified, as the author looks through his receipts for a recent dinner party, which was catered by Mauve Gloves & Madmen, and the flowers to dress up the apartment for the party came from the florist Clutter & Vine. Is this piece, about a successful author who needs still more money to retain his current status, meant to be a self-portrait of Wolfe? I didn’t really think so, but then I came across a 1981 interview of Wolfe by Joshua Gilder, which was reprinted in the book Conversations with Tom Wolfe. During the interview, Wolfe talks about the period where he wrote The Right Stuff, and he says “I even got to the point where I wore clothes in which I couldn’t go out into the street. Such as khaki pants; you know, I think it’s demeaning. I can’t go out into the street in khaki pants or jeans.” Gilder then asks the question most of us would ask next, “You own a pair of jeans?” Wolfe answers, “I have one pair of ‘Double X’ Levis, which I bought in La Porte, Texas, in a place that I was told was an authentic Texas cowboy store, just before I started working on The Right Stuff. I’ve had them on, but I’ve never worn them below the third floor. So I put on a pair of khaki pants and a turtleneck sweater, a heavy sweater.” (Conversations with Tom Wolfe, p.161)

This is the same outfit the author in “Mauve Gloves & Madmen” wears! “Meeting his sideburns at mid-jowl is the neck of his turtleneck sweater, an authentic Navy turtleneck, and the sweater tucks into his Levi’s, which are the authentic Original XX Levi’s, the original straight stovepipes made for wearing over boots. He got them in a bona fide cowhand’s store in La Porte, Texas, during his trip to Houston to be the keynote speaker in a lecture series on ‘The American Dream: Myth and Reality.’ No small part of the latter was a fee of two thousand dollars plus expenses. This outfit, the Navy turtleneck and the double-X Levi’s, means work & discipline. Discipline! as he says to himself every day. When he puts on these clothes, it means that he intends to write, and do nothing else, for at least four hours.” (Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, p.2-3)

Ironically, I had first thought that this description of the way the author was dressed was one reason why the piece wasn’t meant to be a self-portrait of Wolfe. That can’t be Tom Wolfe! Tom Wolfe doesn’t wear jeans!

“The Man Who Always Peaked Too Soon” is an illustrated story. Wolfe is a good illustrator, but I don’t really care for his style. It reminds me too much of the cluttered grotesquerie of Ronald Searle.

“The Truest Sport: Jousting with Sam and Charlie,” about fighter pilots in Vietnam, is kind of a tune-up for Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff. Pilots! The heroes of the skies! Defying death with every trip! They have ice water running through their veins! Was Tom Wolfe actually up there on the flight deck with them? In his white suit? What if it got dirty, full of oil and grease stains? Skkkkreeeowww! A fighter jet roars past! You can feel it, actually FEEL the vibrations in your bones! Tom Wolfe gets INSIDE the heads of these fighter pilots…knowing how they think…you are there for every minute of their flight over North Vietnam…scanning the skies…looking out for Charlie, or the SAMs, the surface to air missiles…trying to stay above the flak…lookout, SAM at one o’clock!!! And then it comes over the radio, “No more parodies of Tom Wolfe’s writing style!” WHAT??? How can I review this book without resorting to multiple exclamation points!!! It’s NOT possible…okay, fine…back to boring normal review writing…

Wolfe even comes close to coining the phrase “the right stuff” in this piece:

“Within the fraternity of men who did this sort of thing day in and day out-within the flying fraternity, that is-mankind appeared to be sheerly divided into those who have it and those who don’t-although just what it was…was never explained.” (p.45)

“The Truest Sport” is a superb piece of writing. Originally published in Esquire in October, 1975, it is a favorite of Wolfe’s, as he once called it, “one of the magazine pieces I’m proudest of.” (Conversations with Tom Wolfe, p.162)

“The Commercial: A Short Story,” is an excellent piece of fiction, told from the point of view of an African-American baseball player filming a television commercial. Wolfe is able to capture the voice of someone totally unlike himself. However, Wolfe was a good enough baseball player to earn a tryout with the New York Giants as a pitcher in 1953. Wolfe once said in a 1976 interview, “This country really is made up of half failed athletes and half women. That’s what America is.” In the same interview, Wolfe described his pitching talents, “I had a great assortment of junk screwballs, sliders, and even a forkball. I lacked a fastball, though. It was my tragic flaw.” (Conversations with Tom Wolfe, p.99)

“The Intelligent Co-Ed’s Guide to America” is a good short piece about the nature of the intellectual class in America to be depressed and always think that the rise of fascism is imminent.

“The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening” is the most famous piece in the book. (The book really should have been called The Me Decade, which would have been a much better title than the too verbose and cumbersome Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine.) It’s a fascinating look at America at the midpoint of the 1970’s. Wolfe has clearly been thinking about the issues in the essay a lot, and many different strands of thought come together in this piece of writing. Wolfe writes that unrivaled prosperity in the post-World War II United States has led to people having all of this time on their hands to discover their “true selves.” I would agree with this thesis. It’s only when people’s basic human needs are being met that they have the time to, say, undergo psychoanalysis.

“The Perfect Crime” discusses how hostage taking has become the ultimate crime of the 1970’s. Again, this fits in with Wolfe’s idea that the 1970’s have become a narcissistic decade. A hostage situation puts all of the focus and attention on the hostage taker, which is exactly what they wanted. It’s all about ME.

“Pornoviolence” described media sensationalism about sex and violence. It starts at a conference for stringers for The National Enquirer, and then Wolfe broadens his lens to look at TV Westerns, James Bond, and Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.

“The Boiler Room and the Computer” is a short essay about how Freud was wrong about how our bodies operate. Probably the least interesting piece in the book.

“Funky Chic” demonstrates how in tune Wolfe is to people’s clothes, and what our clothes tell other people about our statuses. We are in John O’Hara territory of describing social minutiae here, as Wolfe writes about how twenty years ago, “Five out of every seven Yale undergraduates could tell whether the button-down Oxford cloth shirt you had on was from Fenn-Feinstein, J. Press, or Brooks Brothers from a single glance at your shirt front; Fenn-Feinstein: plain breast pocket; J. Press: breast pocket with buttoned flap; Brooks Brothers: no breast pocket at all.” (p.181) You might find that to be too much information, or you might find it fascinating.

“Honks and Wonks” details east coast regional accents, and what status they denote to other people. It’s moderately interesting. But I have to quibble with Wolfe’s assertion that “Bobby Kennedy, like his brother John, had great difficulty in conventional oratory from a rostrum.” (p.205) So the President who delivered one of the greatest inaugural addresses ever wasn’t a good speaker? That’s just false. Bobby Kennedy was also a great speaker. If you need evidence, just listen to his “ripple of hope” speech, delivered in South Africa in 1966, or his moving words, delivered extemporaneously, the night that Martin Luther King was assassinated.

“The Street Fighters” is a short piece, a sort of easy dessert to end the book, about how quick people in New York City are to insult each other.

The second half of Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine is not quite as good as the first half, as some of those later essays are a little inconsequential. But overall, the book is an excellent example of Wolfe’s sharp eye for detail as he chronicled the “me decade” of the 1970’s.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of good material in here. Wolfe describes culture deftly, powerfully, and with a persuasive clarity. Truthfully? I don't know, but it's worth it for the read alone.

[Candice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an old book of cultural essays, but it's interesting to read given the passage of time. Much of it holds up critically and some of them are quite prescient. I was led to the book by a reference from Thomas Frank's book, "Listen, Liberal!" to the class makeup of Martha's Vineyard and how it relates to today's political climate.

[Tony Goins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published the year after I was born and essentially predicted the world I grew up in. In real-time, Wolfe clocks the moment when American individualism morphs into the narcissistic culture we have right now.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hemorrhoids, assholes and Airstreams. You really know how to bring it Mr.Wolfe

[David Crumm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Collage of Wolfe's New Journalism, Circa 1970s
This week, I was interviewing journalism professor Cynthia Vacca Davis (whose new memoir I just reviewed here on Goodreads and on Amazon) and the subject of New Journalism came up. I mentioned that, many years ago, I wrote a magazine profile of Gay Talese, which was quite an audacious thing for me to attempt, since Talese was a master of the profile. But, heck, I was an ambitious 20-something journalist and thought I should take on such impossible challenges. I told Cynthia the true story of how I then had to battle with magazine editors because they did not want to publish Talese’s actual X-rated language in some of the quotes.
“I love that story,” Cynthia said. “I teach Gay Talese when we talk about New Journalism.”
And, boy, did that make me feel old! I was out there as a youngster in this profession trying to joust in what amounted to the medieval tournaments of New Journalism in the mid 1970s and now she’s teaching that era as a unit in her college journalism classes.
Similarly, in that era, I read many of Wolfe’s books hot off the presses when they dropped on us in those years. Or, in many cases, I read Wolfe’s pieces as they originally appeared in publications like Esquire, where we first got to read the best piece in this book, the now-famous Vietnam-era look at pilots raining death on North Vietnam, headlined, “The Truest Sport: Jousting with Sam and Charlie.” Remember that jousting reference I made above to journalists in that era? Well, that’s the metaphor Wolfe used to describe the death-defying challenges these pilots faced, dodging sophisticated missiles every day as they flew toward Hanoi. Somewhere in a box in our home library, I’ve still got that issue of Esquire, which opened the multi-page “Truest Sport” story with a startling full-page illustration of a U.S. pilot diving for a kill.
Oh, and that reference to Esquire I just made? No, I don’t mean today’s Esquire, which seems like a cross between People and Vanity Fair. I mean the Esquire young journalists snapped up decades ago in the era when edgy stuff appeared in each issue.
Again: I’m sighing and need a good gulp of coffee.
This is a long-winded way of saying: Wolfe doesn’t age well, but if you want an explosively written time capsule of the ‘70s, this is a terrific read. I had a ball reading these pieces again over a couple of evenings! And I had forgotten that, in this book, Wolfe also showed us an extensive array of his wit as a pen-and-ink illustrator. A couple of the biggest surprises in this volume are his satirical cartoons!
When this book first appeared in 1976, The New York Times ran an extensive review by the great Anatole Broyard (who later became the center of journalistic controversy himself, but that’s another story about yet another era in journalism). In his 1976 review, Broyard lauded this book as “more than enough to show that Tom Wolfe has evolved from a mere wit into one of the better caricaturists of the age. Perhaps he exaggerates now and again, but when he does, it is as if he is saying: What the hell. Is there any sense in trying to qualify anything in this crazy ‘culture’ of ours?”
For me, among the highlights of this collection are, of course, the Vietnam piece, but also a rollicking overview of some of Wolfe’s public appearances, including an appearance at a conference convened at a Midwest university where he was asked to speak on a panel about “The United States in the Year 2000.” Chicly dressed himself among his equally chicly dressed panelists in 1976, Wolfe claims astonishment that his colleagues told the crowd that our planet could not survive until 2000! Part of Wolfe’s reputation as a conservative, which was not entirely warranted, comes from his lampooning of progressive posers like his colleagues on that panel. But, gosh, I’ll bet his fellow panelists would be chagrined if they happen to reread his coverage of that conference today. They deserved to be chided. But then they’d have to dig out a dusty copy of this book, like I did, and who knows if they even remember Wolfe wrote this book?
Sighing again.
Today, when journalism students like those in Cynthia’s class learn about New Journalism and the eruption of new forms of nonfiction writing in the ‘60s and ‘70s, those poor kids probably will complain that they can’t even understand what Wolfe is writing about in pieces like these. His rapid-fire free association of names and quotations and incidents will force those kids to Google like crazy to wrestle any meaning out of these pages.
But my memory hasn’t failed me yet and, as a journalist of a certain age, I remember those associations Wolfe is making. I had an absolutely wonderful time rereading these pieces.
Now, I probably should go take a nap.

[Jesus M. Hernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesantísimas crónicas de los 70 con el estilo ágil, directo, mordaz y súper-coetáneo de Tom Wolfe. Supongo que, en su momento, este opúsculo no debió de tener mucho éxito, porque sus ensayos son bastante críticos con la corriente dominante entonces. Pasados los años, permiten revivir con gran presencia y viveza la sociedad efervescente de la época, en la que el cambio constante y la desorientación eran las normas. Me pareció genial el fragmento “La plebeyez exquisita” y sus reflexiones sobre la moda como lenguaje.

[female menace · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had higher hopes for this. I have never experience Tom’s writing and felt this was much of a ramble that expanded simple ideologies of his into many more pages than needed. Some I thought were interesting, some caught my attention, some I couldn’t follow. I appreciated his vault of language, his 70s style writing and wit. He has a mind for sure and a smart one. I did like the drawings though. The essays I enjoyed most was “The Perfect Crime” and “Maude Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Wine”. Short, sweet.

[Ence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beach read. The best of Wolfe — little quick punchy essays, even the longer ones (me decade!) pieced up into few-thousand-word increments. Mean-spirited in the best way. Best: me decade, against cool church, extremely mean on collegiate radicals, all the fashion and talky pieces. Worst, obviously: the fiction. Good lines aboundeth.

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A. A stab from the past!

[Dwayne Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several essential Wolfe essays in here. None are a waste of time.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection, though the non-fiction is far better than the fiction. “The Intelligent Coed’s Guide To America” is by far the standout; “Funky Chic” is a close second.

[laila* · Rating 3 out of 5]

i have to agree w hunter s thompson on wolfe: “the people who seem to fascinate him as a writer are so weird they make him nervous.”

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining set of essays. The ones about fashion had the problem of now being outdated, not necessarily Wolfe's fault. Enjoyable reading none the less. My favorite one was about fighter Navy pilots over North Vietnam, really puts you in the pilot's seat. Wolfe can be funny one moment and very serious the next. What a skill!

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom Wolfe is a writer of his time, which is meant neither as a compliment nor as a slight. He is flashy, wordy (even while writing short pieces), bombastic, sarcastic, and sometimes insightful -- the perfect chronicler of the "Me Generation," a term he coined in an essay contained in Mauve Gloves.... Of course, this is also a way of saying that his writing is dated. Reading anything he's written after 1988 is rough because it feels so extravagant, loose, and exaggerated. But the period between 1965 and 1985 was precisely that, so Wolfe is in a unique position to chronicle the very generation he ridicules--an insider with the prowess of self-reflection, even if not the power to resist embodying his generation's defining characteristics.

The book's title essay--about a materialistic, jet-setting writer who hypocritically opines about class struggles--is surely self-deprecating (considering the themes of Wolfe's later novels). But even beyond that first essay, Wolfe's reportage about selfish, vain intellectuals who place importance on clothes and money is necessarily a critique of Wolfe himself--a product of his own generation who doesn't bother to be "refined out of existence" (to borrow a phrase from Joyce) but places himself, or his bombastic voice, front-and-center in every essay in this collection. Sometimes he's fun and revealing; at other times, he's grating. His fiction looks forward to his later novels in their cartoonish character sketches of wealth, race, and class. In his story "The Commercial," he seems to be channeling Ring Lardner's baseball tales, updated for the Me Generation.

Wolfe is at his best in the essay about aviators in Vietnam, "The Truest Sport," an obvious test run for The Right Stuff, perhaps his best work. Wolfe uses some of the same language in "The Truest Sport." (Pilots "pushing the envelope" and having "it." Wolfe even uses ellipses to give stream-of-consciousness narration, as in The Right Stuff.) Reading this article made me long for the days when I was 13-years-old and carried The Right Stuff in my gym bag to read and reread throughout the school year. I was at an age when Wolfe's writing was the Greatest Thing I Had Ever Read. Now that I'm older, I still occasionally enjoy Wolfe's hectic, Day-Glo New Journalism style, but only in small spurts.

[Sabina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh yes, this is classic Tom Wolfe.

In this "sweet" little collection of witty retorts to all things steeped in 1970's culture Wolfe barrels into a series of mostly counter "counter-culture" pieces and vignettes (written at the time rather than a more modern reflection back to the 70's) true to the traditional Tom Wolfe formula.

No judgement is left unsaid.
No outward presentation by any do-gooder is sacred.
No more than the tiniest shred of love is shared.
It's all so painfully good.


And it covers most of what you need regarding the "ME DECADE"- Vietnam soldiers, guru's, self-helpers, skinheads, hipster fashionista's even over the hill hipster writers (ahem).

My favorite was his piece on Vietnam pilots. This would be a powerful read at the end of the year in a Secondary US History course. His ability to animate real people, point out their flaws and what they are really made of is near genius. Also of note are Wolfe's personal sketches peppered throughout the book. These are wonderfully telling. He is clearly a keen observer of all detail, maybe even hinting at some type of neurosis. I bet Tom is OCD.

Anyway, this is a must read for anyone who idealizes the 1970's..just prepare yourself 'cause your fantasies will be pulverized.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When my ex-wife and I split, we divvied up the books which were, to be fair, largely hers, and she thought that I should have this particular one. That was some seven years ago, and this book, along with a number of others, has traveled with me from bookshelf to bookshelf waiting to be read. And now I have read it. This was, perhaps surprisingly — or not, I suppose — my first Tom Wolfe experience, and though many of the pieces reference fairly dated material, all were a treat to read. Tom Wolfe's style — very dramatic, very conversational — begs to be read aloud, which is exactly what I did (from a few selections anyway) with my wife, Megan, at bedtime. The book was perfectly paced, gaining wonderful momentum as one story passed to the next, and though the final piece, "The Street Fighters" was a bit of a toss-off (humorous though it may have been), what preceded it, "Honks and Wonks," was anything but, and it turned out to be my favorite selection of all.

[mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mauve Gloves... gathers together a collection of Wolfe´s essays on American culture during the 1970s. It´s vintage Wolfe and, as I usually find with Wolfe, I really enjoyed reading it. In particular, ¨The Me Decade and The Third Great Awakening,¨ a description of the explosion of narcissism in the 1970s stands out among the collection, especially for what I feel is its continuing relevance today. Besides that, I also especially enjoyed his description of fighter pilot culture in ¨The Truest Sport: Jousting with Sam and Charlie.¨ Wolfe´s true talent lies in his ability to capture the subjective spirit of a time, fad, or movement with unforgiving accuracy, or so-called New Journalism. However, unlike some of his more recent novels, several pieces had a rough, unpolished feel to them, as if they could have withstood another rounding of editing and refinement.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mid-70s collection of short, mainly non-fiction, pieces that had probably all appeared in various magazines - quite comparable in a way to 2001's "Hooking Up", parts of which are going to seem similarly dated a few decades hence. However, "The Me Decade and The Third Great Awakening" and "The Intelligent Coed's Guide To America" (despite its awkward title - was "coed" ever not faintly derogatory sounding? - in this case, he was probably playing on that fact) should be required reading for any undergraduate course attempting to make sense of the latter half of the 20th century.

[David Macpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is amazing is that so much of what he wrote of 35 years ago is still prescient in our society. The essay he wrote on pornviolence is so true, where we live to read or see violent stories and how we like to watch as if we are the killer and not in the point of view of the victim. The title essay was also true and reminded me of my uncle, wh owas a writer in new york. some ofthe final essays were not as zippy, seeming to repeat themselves about funky chic, but still, a fun writer and a perceptive look.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating collection of Wolfe's non-fiction writing touching on everything from the "me generation" to fighter pilots in Vietnam, and the selections are interspersed by Wolfe's own, delightful ink caricature sketches. His writing comes across as energetic, often humorous, and refreshingly direct (which also means arrogant and snarky, especially if you disagree with his point of view, but he seems to have captured the early '70s zeitgeist in this collection).

[Adam Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looked at this book again recently; I didn't realise until now - or had forgotten - how influential it's been on my writing style. I thought I was doing Martin Amis - in fact I'm doing Tom Wolfe (plus Alfred Jarry); makes sense, considering Wolfe's caricatures, grotesques, and wry acerbic emphasis on design, style, fashion etc etc - his highly detailed architectures and systems that somewhat dwarf the characters.

Recommended.

[Kendall]

Collection of essay/stories from Wolfe's non-fiction days. The title of the book comes from the first essay in the book about a famous author living in a NYC apartment and trying to maintain his social status. Mauve Gloves & Madmen is the name of a catering company the famous author uses for a party and Clutter & Vine is the name of a florist he uses for the party.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux 1976)(818). This is a collection of Wolfe's essays on American culture during the 1970's. I usually enjoy Tom Wolfe's writing, but I was unable to engage with this one. DNF. My rating: 6/10, finished 1981.

[Nicole Diamond · Rating 1 out of 5]

If it has one star I liked it a lot
If it has two stars I liked it a lot and would recommend it
If it has three stars I really really liked it a lot
If it has four stars I insist you read it
If it has five stars it was life changing

[Tim Hainley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wolfe is a brilliant reporter and chronicler of events, but is also such a snob and prick of cultural critic that he makes me reflexively mentally defend his ridiculous baby boomer targets, something you would be extremely hard-pressed to find me doing in other circumstances.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of his better efforts. At his best, I like Tom wolfe quite a bit. But here he is nowhere near his best.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish he'd kept writing like this. This book is really more of a historical document at this point, since it's so dated, but there are some really good parts.