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Tom Wolfe The Pump House Gang by Tom Wolfe Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1965 » Purchase this book from Purchase this book from Running throughout The Pump House Gang is the central theme of most of Tom Wolfe's writing: Status. Much of the book deals with a surprising phenomenon in contemporary life: a determined retreat from conventional social hierarchies that Tom Wolfe calls 'starting your own league.' Surfers, motorcyclists, lumpen-dandies and. Stay-at-homes (see 'The King of the Status Drop-Outs')-everybody's doing it. Except for die-hards in the crumbling old social worlds of New York and London, where the confusion is so great (see 'Bob and Spike' and 'The Mid-Atlantic Man') that nobody can tell whether this is really the path to the top they've taken or just the service elevator. Dazzlingly brilliant as a stylist, daringly provocative as a commentator, and always entertaining, Tom Wolfe is in his new book quite thoroughly. He is at his best with the Pump House Gang, a remarkable surfing elite-who reappear briefly in a book published simultaneously with this one, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, about the adventures of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the rise of the psychedelic life style in America, and the founding of a bizarre new religion.
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In the midst of it all, many members of the redoubtable Pump House Gang become indoor sports-happily freaking out in pads rather than wiping out in the surf, but with the same unique Pump House Gang flair. Reviews 'Very good stuff, perceptive, horrifying, funny, perhaps exhausting all at once.' -Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times ' The Pump House Gang cuts deeper into the blubber of the modern 'revolutionary' psyche and discusses, in the words of the author, 'ego extension, the politics of pleasure, the self-realization racket, the pharmacology of Overjoy. Tom Wolfe is more than brilliant.
He is more than urbane, suave, trenchant and all those book review adjectives. Tom Wolfe is a goddam joy. Also, not to insult him, he writes like a master.' -Karl Shapiro, The Washington Post Book World.
My edition is way older than this, but this was the only one with a picture. The previous owner unfortunately underlined heavily and inserted helpful margin comments throughout ('GREAT!!!!!' I read this book, along with basically the entire Tom Wolfe ouevre (excluding things I had already read or had of yet to be published) my freshman year of college, I decided to re-read it mostly I guess because the title vignette is about La Jolla in the '60s. Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up to re My edition is way older than this, but this was the only one with a picture. The previous owner unfortunately underlined heavily and inserted helpful margin comments throughout ('GREAT!!!!!'
I read this book, along with basically the entire Tom Wolfe ouevre (excluding things I had already read or had of yet to be published) my freshman year of college, I decided to re-read it mostly I guess because the title vignette is about La Jolla in the '60s. Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up to re-reading. Tom Wolfe in the '60s is the Tom Wolfe everyone parodies (excessive onomatopoeia, exclamation points, and lots of 'stiffening giblets' and various things stuffed 'shank to flank'). I was a bit wary (prejudiced), because hunter thompson always talked mad shit about wolfe.called him a shameless phony, etc.maybe h.s.t. Was a little bit threatened by wolfe. This book documented some interesting social scenes, and (to my pleasant surprise) it was full of muscular, provocative language and imagery.
He only occasionally goes out a little too far on the ledge in trying to throw in the 'authentic' slang, which comes across feeling a little forced. Also, i was impressed at his a i was a bit wary (prejudiced), because hunter thompson always talked mad shit about wolfe.called him a shameless phony, etc.maybe h.s.t. Was a little bit threatened by wolfe. This book documented some interesting social scenes, and (to my pleasant surprise) it was full of muscular, provocative language and imagery.
He only occasionally goes out a little too far on the ledge in trying to throw in the 'authentic' slang, which comes across feeling a little forced. Also, i was impressed at his ability to draw parallels between the emerging trends and subcultures to precedents from previous centuries, in foreign countries. He had a more scholarly approach to the social journalism scene, whereas hunter seemed to just prefer to dive right into it and display society through the lens of his own twisted (chemically and socially), anti-authoritative worldview. If wolfe was writing about new marginal subcultures for the mainstream intelligentsia, then hunter was writing for the freaks themselves. But either way, they could both fucking write. Trying to get in the spirit of visiting Southern California, where I am clearly a stranger in a strange land, I decided to pick up The Pump House Gang at a bookstore in La Jolla, mere steps from where the title essay is set. That essay is not only ingenious but should be (and in many cases, is) required reading for would-be feature writers.
There are also brilliant, if now dated, vignettes about the lives of celebrities, like Hugh Hefner and Marshall McLuhan, and the unsung, like two rags-to-rich Trying to get in the spirit of visiting Southern California, where I am clearly a stranger in a strange land, I decided to pick up The Pump House Gang at a bookstore in La Jolla, mere steps from where the title essay is set. That essay is not only ingenious but should be (and in many cases, is) required reading for would-be feature writers. There are also brilliant, if now dated, vignettes about the lives of celebrities, like Hugh Hefner and Marshall McLuhan, and the unsung, like two rags-to-riches pop art dealers in New York and the woman with the biggest breasts in San Francisco. But the momentum I had with this book in California faded when I returned to Dallas, and it took an extra effort during the holiday to finish it. There are some essays that just don't hold up well over 40 years' time, and some of his stories about '60s London just don't hold much interest.
However, a delightful essay called 'The Automated Hotel' about bureaucracy intervening on his stay at the New York Hilton builds the momentum a little more at the end and now is one of my favorite Wolfe pieces. There is an impressive range in this collection of essays, from the early California surf grom scene ('Pump House Gang'), to the pioneers of silicon breast implants in San Francisco ('Put-Together Girl'), to Hugh Heffner's eccentric lifestyle ('King of the Status Dropouts'), to a couple of ascendant art collectors in New York ('Bob and Spike'). All of them published in 1968 at that. My favorite piece was the last, in which Wolfe walks around New York city with an anthropologist who is interested There is an impressive range in this collection of essays, from the early California surf grom scene ('Pump House Gang'), to the pioneers of silicon breast implants in San Francisco ('Put-Together Girl'), to Hugh Heffner's eccentric lifestyle ('King of the Status Dropouts'), to a couple of ascendant art collectors in New York ('Bob and Spike').
All of them published in 1968 at that. My favorite piece was the last, in which Wolfe walks around New York city with an anthropologist who is interested in the negative impacts of overcrowding on humans ('Behavioral Sink'). He cites studies of animals that show each species has baseline tolerance for crowding, above which individuals become so stressed out that they actually die from adrenal gland problems. Despite Wolfe's tossing around a few sketchy hypotheses, I found it fascinating, and now wonder what more recent research has shown on this. On the whole, it's classic Wolfe and worth a read.
When Tom Wolfe sticks to one subject, like astronauts, he soars. When he puts a collection together, he falls flat on his face. Thus is the case of The Pump House Gang, which is an assortment of articles that is heavily lopsided since it's great at times, and a total bore at others. The biggest problem is that the boring stories far outweigh the interesting ones.
Also, Tom Wolfe's exuberant writing style grows stale over time when there isn't a solid base behind it. I know this book was meant to When Tom Wolfe sticks to one subject, like astronauts, he soars. When he puts a collection together, he falls flat on his face. Thus is the case of The Pump House Gang, which is an assortment of articles that is heavily lopsided since it's great at times, and a total bore at others.
The biggest problem is that the boring stories far outweigh the interesting ones. Also, Tom Wolfe's exuberant writing style grows stale over time when there isn't a solid base behind it. I know this book was meant to show various counter-cultures back in the 1960s, but it mostly doesn't work. I also think Tom Wolfe sounds the most racist in this book than any of his other works. Definitely my least favorite Tom Wolfe book from the ones I've read of his.
It was a short read. But also a slog. It started on the beach. That was where they first saw him. They weren’t quite sure which member of the group had spotted him first, but eventually they became aware of him. This guy just hanging out on the beach with a notebook. And what was he wearing?
Dig, man, what kind of crazy trip was he on? And how old was he? He didn’t look that old, but he just seemed old, you know, like there was no way he would know who the Beach Boys were, or that he could possibly know anything about choppe It started on the beach. That was where they first saw him.
They weren’t quite sure which member of the group had spotted him first, but eventually they became aware of him. This guy just hanging out on the beach with a notebook. And what was he wearing? Dig, man, what kind of crazy trip was he on? And how old was he? He didn’t look that old, but he just seemed old, you know, like there was no way he would know who the Beach Boys were, or that he could possibly know anything about chopped and channeled woodies. What kind of a nutso getup was he wearing?
I mean, fer Chrissake, who in the hell wears a suit to the beach, man? And he asked them all of these really basic questions, it was obvious he had never been surfing.
They had to explain everything to him, which they were only too happy to do. KA-SPLOSH, the surf came roaring in, and it almost gets him wet, and he’s got these white buck shoes on, if he gets those babies wet they are done for, but zoom! He moves back real fast, and doesn’t get a drop on him. Nothing seems to faze this guy, it’s like he’s off on his own out in some other time zone, neither hip nor square, just in his own bag with his own groovy happening going on. He has this soft voice, like he doesn’t want to draw too much attention to himself, despite the Beau Brummell wardrobe. He’s got this real high, cresting forehead, with this mass of hair swooping over from left to right. He pulls out this notebook, this great, hulking green notebook with the spirals at the top, and he starts firing questions, one after the other.
He’s scribbling furiously, feverishly trying to get it all down on paper as they tell him the dope on their lives. In the Introduction to The Pump House Gang, Tom Wolfe’s second collection of articles, which was released on the same day in 1968 as Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe described taking part in a symposium on “The Style of the Sixties.” The other panelists all seemed quite depressed about the state of the world. When it was Wolfe’s turn to speak, he said “What are you talking about?
We’re in the middle of aHappiness Explosion!” (p.9) The other panelists didn’t have the foggiest notion what Wolfe was talking about, but he was right! Sure, things might have seemed like they were going to hell back in the late 1960’s, but middle class Americans suddenly had the leisure time and money to be deliriously happy! All of the time! And, despite the stagnation in middle class earning power since then, we still have a lot of things that can distract us in 2016! We are doing less and less manual labor-which means more time to tune out the world around us and create our own versions of reality!
Wolfe’s real subject of The Pump House Gang is exploring different subcultures and how they define themselves. In “The Hair Boys,” he writes: “It is not that any of these groups is ever rich. It is just that there is so much money floating around that they can get their hands on enough of it to express themselves, and devote time to expressing themselves, to a degree nobody in their netherworld position could ever do before.” (p.103) There are 15 pieces in The Pump House Gang, and as usual in Wolfe’s collections, many topics are covered. “The Pump House Gang” follows a group of teenage surfers in La Jolla, California. Wolfe describes how these kids have set up their own lifestyle of surfing and hanging out-they’re a prime example of the subcultures he examines throughout the book. “The Mid-Atlantic Man” is a brilliant piece of reporting about a London advertising man who travels to New York City regularly on business and then finds himself stuck between being English and being American. It’s a piece of Wolfe’s writing that foreshadows what a great fiction writer he would become.
It reads like fiction, since you’re inside this guy’s mind, but you know that it’s all true! This piece shows how in tune Wolfe is to differences and gradations in status.
On page 40, we get a mention of Fabrilex, which is the name of a fictitious company that Wolfe has used in other books as well. It shows up at random times; look for it in The Bonfire of the Vanities. “King of the Status Dropouts” is a profile of Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner.
It’s fascinating stuff, as during this period of time Hefner was holed up in his Chicago mansion, running the Playboy brand and empire entirely from his house! He wasn’t out on the town partying with blonde starlets; he was staying in, dressed in his robe, smoking his pipe, drinking Pepsi-Cola after Pepsi-Cola, and embracing the Sexual Revolution that he had helped to create! One of my favorite anecdotes about Hugh Hefner, dating from this same time period, is about Hefner’s appearance on William F. Buckley’s television show Firing Line. In his excellent 1971 book Cruising Speed, Buckley related the story of how a friend of his was watching Hefner’s appearance on his show with some guests from France; however, when they tuned in, there was a problem with the sound, so they couldn’t hear what the men were saying. Based solely on their body posture, the French guests surmised that the slouching, grinning Buckley, with his arching eyebrows and darting tongue, must be the publisher of Playboy, and the erect, ramrod-straight Hefner must be the conservative Republican writer and host!
In all seriousness, I think Hugh Hefner is quite a remarkable guy, and someone should really write a biography about him, as I think he’s one of the figures most responsible for the sexual revolution in America. “The Put-Together Girl” chronicles the adventures of Carol Doda, an exotic dancer in San Francisco who was one of the first women in America to get breast implants. “The Noonday Underground” is another piece that Wolfe wrote in London, about teenagers who spend their lunch hours at dingy discotheques listening to mod rock and buying the latest Carnaby Street knockoffs. “The Mild Ones” is a very short piece about “work-a-daddy citizens” who are also into motorcycles. “The Hair Boys” is about teenage car culture, and it revisits car customizer Ed Roth, one of the subjects of Wolfe’s first ground-breaking essay, “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.” “What if He is Right?” profiles media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who had become an unlikely mid-1960’s celebrity. It’s an interesting piece, opening with Wolfe staring at, and becoming obsessed with, McLuhan’s clip-on necktie. “Bob and Spike” dives into the New York City art world of the mid-1960’s, as seen through the eyes of Robert and Ethel Scull, two of the most prominent collectors of that time.
Ethel was the subject of Andy Warhol’s wonderful 1963 portrait, Ethel Scull 36 Times. There’s a marvelous description of a party that the Sculls gave at the Top o’ the Fair restaurant in Flushing, which was built for the 1964-5 World’s Fair. The restaurant is still there, now called “Terrace on the Park.” “Tom Wolfe’s New Book of Etiquette” is the funniest piece in the book. It features Wolfe’s views on cocktail parties, and the rapidly changing social mores of the 1960’s. Among other fascinating tidbits, you’ll learn that “Socially, New York today is highly redolent of London during the Regency period (roughly, 1800 to 1830).” (p.169) “The Life & Hard Times of a Teenage London Society Girl” is another piece from London where Wolfe does some great reporting and gets into the mind of, well, a teenage London society girl. “The Private Game” is yet another dispatch from London, this time about private gambling clubs that had proliferated after the legalization of gambling in England.
“The Automated Hotel” is one of the few non-fiction pieces in which the focus is squarely on Tom Wolfe. Wolfe is the protagonist of this piece, and he has some very harsh words for the then newly opened New York Hilton Hotel, where he checked in while trying to avoid distractions and finish several magazine articles. “The Shockkkkkk of Recognition” follows movie star Natalie Wood as she visits New York City in April of 1966 to tape an episode of What’s My Line? And to possibly buy some paintings.
Wolfe gets to observe Wood at an art dealer where she looks at a variety of paintings. Had I been a dashing young New Journalist working for the New York World Journal Tribune in 1966, I would have gladly accepted this assignment!
I also would have accepted the assignment, “watch Natalie Wood watch paint dry.” The day before Wood taped the episode of What’s My Line? She was in Boston at Harvard University accepting an award from the Harvard Lampoon for the “Worst Actress of the Year.” No one accepted sarcastic awards like that in person, but Wood confounded her critics by showing up. Of course, she stole the show, treating the event like she had won the Oscar. Natalie Wood was very funny on What's My Line? As she tries to stump the panel by adopting a Russian accent, and she completely throws panelist Arlene Francis for a loop when Francis asks her, “Are you something other than American?” Wood replies, “Well, in my mind.” “O Rotten Gotham-Sliding Down into the Behavioral Sink” explains the ideas of anthropologist Edward T. Hall, who theorized that life in New York City was getting worse because of overcrowding. It’s an interesting theory, and I wonder what Hall would have to say about overcrowding in cities now, fifty years later.
As noted above, The Pump House Gang was released on the same day in 1968 as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. While The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test has gone on to assume classic status and is one of Wolfe’s most famous books, The Pump House Gang remains more obscure.
It’s probably inevitable that collections of non-fiction articles are rarely ever the most famous works of authors, but despite the fact that it might not be well known today, The Pump House Gang, like its predecessor The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, was a very steady seller. The copy of The Pump House Gang that I own is the 13th paperback printing, from November of 1980. The Pump House Gang went through four paperback printings in 1970 alone, so I’d say it was pretty successful for Tom Wolfe.
It’s a fine example of his exhilarating writing style, and his sharp observations on contemporary culture. Placing Tom Wolfe's The Pump House Gang within the context of its time is both challenging and rewarding. This collection of essays, published in book form in 1968 after virtually all of the essays had appeared in publications like New York or the London Weekend Telegraph between 1964 and 1966, beckons to us from a time that is as long-ago for us as World War I was for Wolfe's original 1960's readers. The original circumstances of the publication of these essays - Sunday-magazine supplements fo Placing Tom Wolfe's The Pump House Gang within the context of its time is both challenging and rewarding. This collection of essays, published in book form in 1968 after virtually all of the essays had appeared in publications like New York or the London Weekend Telegraph between 1964 and 1966, beckons to us from a time that is as long-ago for us as World War I was for Wolfe's original 1960's readers.
The original circumstances of the publication of these essays - Sunday-magazine supplements for major-city newspapers - mean that Wolfe, as he jet-sets back and forth between Swinging London and turbulent '60's New York, is looking for interesting and unusual stories of quirky people doing attention-getting things. These were originally stories that were meant to be read by busy urbanites seeking a bit of weekend diversion from their hectic lives, and that fact imposes its limitations on the work collected in The Pump House Gang; but Wolfe's gifts for mercilessly accurate observation, and for devastatingly adroit turns of phrase, nonetheless emerge throughout. Of the fifteen essays included in this collection, the title essay, 'The Pump House Gang,' is probably the most uncharacteristic. This vignette about a group of youthful surfers who hang out at beachside, hard by a pump house for the La Jolla, California, water system, captures its San Diego-area setting so vividly that it is cited by many San Diego travel books as a good book to read when one is travelling there; but be advised, if you are San Diego-bound, that this 21-page essay is the only part of Wolfe's 309-page book that has anything to do with San Diego. Most of the rest go back and forth between New York and London with Concorde-like speed, as Wolfe works to introduce us to the strangeness transpiring on both sides of the pond. 'The Mid-Atlantic Man' has nothing to do with the region of the United States that is usually defined as stretching from New York to Washington, D.C.; rather, it explores the phenomenon by which British businessmen working in the United States, and American businessmen working in the United Kingdom, both start taking on aspects of their respective host cultures.
'King of the Status Dropouts' is an extended interview with Hugh Hefner, cloistered in the seclusion of his high-tech Chicago mansion. 'The Put-Together Girl' tells the story of a San Francisco exotic dancer who has received silicone shots to increase the size of her bustline - at that time, a relatively new procedure. 'The Noonday Underground' gives us the chance to travel along with young work-a-day Londoners as they escape the drudgery of their low-wage, low-status jobs for some lunch-hour clubbing. 'The Mild Ones' captures the lives of Harley-Davidson motorcycle enthusiasts in Columbus, Ohio, and 'The Hair Boys' takes us to a Los Angeles drive-in where the proponents of L.A.
Car culture spend at least much time on the stylized clothes they wear as on the cars they drive. 'Bob and Spike' explores the trials and triumphs of New York art collectors who seek to move up into the elite of Gotham's art world.
'Tom Wolfe's New Book of Etiquette' reminds us that there was once a time when the publishing of curse words, even within an essay that deals with changing social mores, once would have seemed daring. 'The Life & Hard Times of a Teenage London Society Girl' emphasizes how, when one sets aside the Mod fashions and the electrified '60's music, the lives of young women in the London of the time are marked by the same class divisions that defined life in past centuries. 'The Private Game' introduces us to a traveling illegal-gambling enterprise that did a thriving business in various London flats, even though there were plenty of places where one could gamble legally. The humor of 'The Automated Hotel' seems forced, as Wolfe chronicles his misadventures dealing with the then-high-tech conveniences of the New York Hilton Hotel. And with 'The Shockkkkkk of Recognition' (I'm not exactly sure why Wolfe felt the need to type the letter 'k' six times), we travel along with film star Natalie Wood as she eludes paparazzi and shops for great art at a high-end New York gallery. Stylistically, the essays in The Pump House Gang very much partake of the conventions of the New Journalism movement that was popular at the time.
In an effort to capture the dynamism of 1960's life, the New Journalists utilized many unconventional techniques - from long passages in italics for no apparent reason, to onomatopoeic presentation of sounds like thragggggh or rrr.rrr.rrr., to CAPITALIZATION THAT MAKES IT FEEL AS THOUGH THE AUTHOR IS YELLING AT YOU, to racial and ethnic slurs that seem to be thrown in simply for the sake of gratituous shock value, to ellipses.and more ellipses.and still more ellipses.to dashes - that are followed by dashes - until one feels all dashed out. And then there are the stylistic flashes that are frankly unexplainable, as in 'What If He Is Right?' , an essay about the popularity and influence of media critic Marshall McLuhan, when Wolfe writes, 'What if he's right What.if.he.is.right W-h-a-t i-f h-e i-s r-i-g-h-t' (p.
In 1968, no doubt all this stylistic innovation seemed new. It no longer does. Sadly, the fate of anything that is called New is that it will eventually become Old. Just as so much of the New Wave music of the 1980's has taken on an Old Wave sound, so has the New Journalism of the 1960's aged, and not aged well. I am also a bit troubled by Wolfe's implied attitude toward his subjects.
The Pump House Gang La Jolla
Much of his early writing took on an unpleasantly superior tone toward his subjects; it's as if the man walked up to interviewees and said, 'Hi, I'm Tom Wolfe and I'm here to anatomize your flaws for the benefit of coastal sophisticates.' The only wonder is that, when people saw the man from Richmond, Virginia, walking up to them in his white suit, they didn't just turn and run screaming. Then all Wolfe could have smugly pooh-poohed is the manner in which his prospective subjects turned and ran screaming. And yet the thoughtful and perceptive work of which Wolfe is capable shows through in the collection's final essay, 'O Rotten Gotham - Sliding Down Into the Behavioral Sink.' In this essay, Wolfe follows anthropologist Edward T. Hall of the Illinois Institute of Technology with interest and respect, rather than with his usual dismissive attitude, as Hall persuasively explains how the overcrowding that New Yorkers accept as part of their lives, at Grand Central Station and aboard subway trains and in overcrowded apartments, virtually guarantees stress and illness and increases the likelihood of violence. It is a gem of an essay, and by far the best essay in the collection.
I'm not sure of the extent to which the essays can be said to be unified. In the introduction, Wolfe claims that all of the essays share the theme of people isolating themselves in 'statuspheres' (p. I'm not sure I buy that. But the essays all make for interesting reading, and put one back in those turbulent days of the 1960's. You may like The Pump House Gang, you may hate it, but I'm pretty sure you won't be bored.
I expected to like this a lot more than I did. Most of the time I couldn't stand Wolfe's writing style- it just felt really forced (and dated, but that's to be expected). When you read HST, he sounds like the lunatic you know he was.
When you read Talese, he writes straight but incorporates literary techniques into his nonfiction. He just sounds like a cop. Like, he writes as if he was in the middle of the action but if this dude was hanging around the party he'd be in the corn hrm. I expected to like this a lot more than I did.
Most of the time I couldn't stand Wolfe's writing style- it just felt really forced (and dated, but that's to be expected). When you read HST, he sounds like the lunatic you know he was. When you read Talese, he writes straight but incorporates literary techniques into his nonfiction.
He just sounds like a cop. Like, he writes as if he was in the middle of the action but if this dude was hanging around the party he'd be in the corner with a weird moustache and no one would trust him. At least that's the feeling I got from how this is written. It's a shame because there were a few pretty interesting topics. Also some really uninteresting ones I had no interest in. For all his semi-snark at the WASPy establishment, he's very clearly a part of it. Wolfe was educated at Washington and Lee Universities and also at Yale, where he received a PhD in American studies.
The Pump House Gang By Tom Wolfe
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 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.
Who Wrote The Pump House Gang
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 movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Tom Wolfe is also famous for coining and defining the term.