I just finished reading The Pump House Gang by Tom Wolfe. This book was written in 1968 and is a series of peeks into various subcultures in western society at the time. We get to meet the Southern California beach community, New York art snobs, two different London teen subcultures (one high and one low), and several others. About halfway through the book, we meet Marshall McLuhan, and we get to learn about his sub-culture too.
The chapter about McLuhan was probably the most interesting part of the whole book. I've read several of his books, and am certainly aware of the hype that surrounded him, but I didn't know his whole history, and Wolfe documents it well. Wolfe also draws a wonderful parallel between McLuhan and Freud in terms of their rise from relative obscurity, and they hype-fest that attached itself to their work and blew it out of proportion.
The book ends with a bit of a digression: the tale of a week's stay in the New York Hilton, which had just opened and was an early "automated hotel." A cautionary tale indeed for those of us in the tech industry.
The book was a very good read, but a tough one -- it's not that long, but it still took me a couple of weeks to get throug, mostly because I had to think through the cultural references that are beyond my personal experience. It was intersting reading an early Tom Wolfe book -- I've read some of his more recent stuff, and it's fun to see how his writing style has evolved (and in my view, improved) over the decades.
Next up: Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.
9:25:43 PM  ; ;
|
