Dedicated to
“all sorts of outlaws, and outcasts, by necessity or choice.”
(from The Pump House Gang, p. 3)
and to all incendiary poets:
“I am absolutely convinced that all poets, real poets, are rebels. I don't demand that all poets write political poetry, political declarations. Any kind of honesty is rebellion.”
—Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Dangerious Dossiers, p. 239

The quintessential hero in Tom Wolfe's writings is the outlaw disguised as gentleman. In search of the heroic, he celebrates the lone adventurer—whether it's the last frontier in bootlegging, space, or the electronics industry. Each investigation has always led him into murky waters. He has pursued the Holy Grail of Truth while others have chased the pot of gold. As each turn occurred in his “holy calling,” he has remained undaunted in his definition of the true American hero. Early in his career, Wolfe selected assignments of seemingly mundane subject matter only to transform them into multi-faceted jewels through which we can glimpse human endeavor. His perceptions have antagonized, but that's what the unvarnished truth must do. This literary outlaw has perfected his examination through a conscientious attempt at being a gentleman. His portraits of Americans also exhibit the oxymoron: outlaw gentleman. His faithful yet “surrealistic” observations strike the reader with brutally honest details and particulars that point to a universal truth. The concentrated attention paid to the accessories, footnotes (literal and figurative), and the seemingly insignificant or inconsequential clues contribute to the best detective work done on American culture. To Wolfe, the tiniest grain is a world to be scrutinized in its reflection of the beach. His insights remind me of the camera obscura which revealed through the tiniest hole the most incredible panorama. It is this telescoping of human behavior that accurately records the choices made for good or for bad. The outlaw gentleman is that phenomenal American Hero who holds the key to our understanding of human potential.

Each of the selected outlaw gentlemen and ladies will be examined as to their social anomie or lawlessness. The autonomous individual is the keystone to Wolfe's construction of the American culture as he sees it. His earliest writing, a Ph.D. dissertation at Yale, was a sociological analysis of the League of American Writers. Apparently the Communist party transformed it into a monolithic bureaucracy until the outlaws awakened the world to the unquestioning, undivided loyalty and blind obedience to the organization. The dissenting voices sparked investigations which unfortunately led to the paranoid McCarthy era. Following the discussion of the League of American Writers, there will be a cursory comparison of those individuals who appeared in his writings from the mid-60s to the present. There are the men and women who put their hide on the line for their families, their nation, and the world. Finally, my examination will culminate with the quintessential outlaw gentleman, Tom Wolfe himself.

All the individuals discussed in this paper lived beyond the accepted orthodox laws of nature or the principles inherent in the society's fabric. Wolfe's heroes are unorthodox, heretical, answer to themselves, and are responsible to themselves. It is not the Cellini egotism, but the self-reliant Emerson or the defiant Paine who provide this love of Truth. There's no hubris here. Americans have come to know the arrogance of a John Wayne or Stallone movie character as heroic. These celluloid figures are not the epitome of heroism. Heroism requires more than guts. Wolfe might be enamored with an early historical prototype, such as the notorious outlaw “gentleman” Thomas Morton, who in defiance of Governor Bradford, sold guns and traded with the Indians. He was, as a result, imprisoned. [Wolfe's Ph.D. courses in American Studies would have covered the first American “Bust” at Merrymount. (For more information, see Robert Bannister's American Values in Transition by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.)] Morton's anarchism may be a great American tradition which has come down to us in the pernicious version of Oliver North.

Wolfe has been doing some gun-running for quite some time, too. His fascination for the off-beat story and his own stylistically quirky, idiomatic phrasing and vitriolic writings have placed him in that elite cadre who parade with credential, breeding, and experience in order to sneak into the holy of holies where he unveils the mysteries and hypocrisies of the aristocrats, bourgeoisie, and middle class. Many of his selected individuals cheerfully offer themselves for target practice only to discover that Wolfe is a marksman who aims and only hits the bull's eye. He uses a ritualistic method to secure himself access, and upon completing the Boho dance, he has only to thank them and collect the pay-off: fame, money, and perhaps the beautiful blondes. How does he do it? A Magister Ludi—the high priest of the Boho dance, he has survived by always being a gentleman despite protests, criticisms, and ostracism. In fact, one critic described him as radical in chic's clothing. What subterfuge!

It is no wonder that his very own unorthodox approaches are reflected in those outlaw gentlemen he admires. He demands high standards of himself, and he expects others to perform at his level if they intend to join with him as a member of this heroic tradition. It may entail taking the unpopular, unattractive, and unrewarding path, but in the end, there is promise of personal satisfaction which cannot come with having accomplished the job according to someone else's rules. While many of Wolfe's colleagues were writing by-the-book and kow-towing, he and the so-called “New Journalists” invented, or rather, stumbled upon a new genre.¹ The literary Outlaw Gentleman was born out of this reportage school and the social realism of Johnson, Dickens, Zola, and Dos Passos.

Wolfe has emerged as the heroic “Man of Letters” in spite of his protests. Ironically, he developed a disdain for this appellation just as Dr. Johnson did. According to Carlyle, the literary man's role was a dissenter and opponent of entrenched power. While Wolfe appears to have criticized the “Man of Letters” label, his stylistic independence is indebted to that archaic term. His writings have been more than just commentaries upon the manners and morals of our society, but they assess those values held by risk-takers who made our civilization dynamic. As an outlaw critic himself, he achieved status and notoriety among peers and within the context of even larger circles such as his community, the nation, and the world.

Wolfe is the single-combat warrior-scholar on the new literary frontier. He has gone further, jumped higher, and run faster than anybody. His tenacity and good luck have worked together for his successful “calling” as outlaw. He has been one of the few who “pushed the envelope” and exceeded even his own imagination. Faithful to the outlaw gentleman, his heroic characters may become legendary along with Wolfe, who is certain to be immortalized by a twentieth-century Boswell.

CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS: FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER

Olympians are remembered. “Everyone knew the name of the individual who ranked foremost in the Olympus, the ace of all aces, as it were, among the brothers of the right stuff.”² Certainly the Homeric Odysseus is one of the earliest examples of an outlaw gentleman. Odysseus was a “man of many devices and disguises.” He used every available tool to beat the odds. His cleverness and ingenuity were admirable. He risked it all to save his men. He killed the Cyclops, and yet he demonstrated the Olympian self-control, manner, and virtues of a gentleman. His achievements were due not only to innate capabilities, but to tenacity and self-reliance. He was one of the first single-combat warriors. Although it did take him ten years to return “home,” his heroism was acknowledged.

Other Trojan War heroes could be analyzed, but he is the only one who exhibits choice. His choice is self-conscious. He is not driven by his thumos. [Thumos: Emotional soul, from Julian Jaynes’ Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Chapter 3, “The Mind of Iliad.”] His courage is not provoked by the gods’ will as it is in the Iliad. He has a job to do. He is not “up against the wall” as Achilles, Agamemnon, and the others are. Rather, he is the outlaw gentleman who makes the personal sacrifice because he is truly free and desires it.

In the Republic, warriors are gentlemen. The ennobled warrior-gentlemen exhibit the high-spirited principle in the soul.³ In the Phaedrus 237e and the Cratylus 397e, the outlaw gentleman listens and obeys his daimonion as an inner guide, so that he can make judgements that aim at “what is best” (arete). According to Stone, arete (excellence) may be connected with the Greek god of War, Ares.⁴ Arete and virtue both have connotations of machismo and manliness. What better prerequisite for heroism than these qualities. In fact, Socrates also defined the good man or the golden race of men within these terms. In Cratylus 398 d and e, heroes are born of love (eros). This is the essence of the philosopher. As Socrates states in the Phaedo, “to philosophize is to die—to die daily.” So the hero must pursue or love wisdom but never claim to possess it as the Sophists did. Socrates lived up to this heroism; he stood outside the laws and answered to a higher law. He was considered an anarchist whose impeccable charm and manners attracted the greatest minds of the age. He was the ideal warrior-scholar. His political life may have been inconsequential. However, he apparently did fulfill two obligatory political responsibilities, but acted “outside the law.”⁵ While holding up a mirror to the Athenians, he exposed their avaricious and corrupt politicians and the Sophists, who carried out those laws that benefited their patrons. This outlaw gentleman, Socrates, was selfless and placed truth higher than any man-made law. One does what one must according to a higher unwritten law, but if it is viewed as illegal, one must pay the consequences. He did just that. (Of course, let it be known that this writer does not feel that Socrates broke any of Athen's laws at any time.)

There are probably few Socratic heroes who are political prisoners, but there are some who do challenge injustices and the exercise of personal freedom. Wolfe's characters parade upon what is left of the (ruined) landscape of the American dream. Sometimes we are moved and occasionally dazzled by outrageous stunts and heroic acts. His outlaws emulate the persona of the Homeric and Athenian heroes. According to Veblen, one of Wolfe's favorite sociologists, it is the high-bred gentleman and the rowdy that normally resort to blows.⁶ They are often caught competing in the same activity. Their attributes are prowess, bellicose chivalry, gambling propensity, barbarian temperament, truculence, and conspicuous consumption.⁷ Their behavior can be mildly mischievous or downright ludicrous. They can be classified as a prankster of the highest order. They prance, dance, caper, and strut to the beat of their own drumming. [Wolfe mentions Ken Kesey's early pranks on Perry Lane, Stanford University's Bohemian quarters. Coincidentally Veblen lived on Perry Lane, and evidently, Veblen's outlaw behavior got him into trouble as well! (See Stuart Chase's description of Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class, and Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, p. 30.)]

Wolfe is willing “to rummage in vain … for the figure of great prestige who, in the Thoreau manner, marches to a different drummer—the solitary genius whose work can only be described as “sui generis.”⁸ This search does eventually lead him to that flamboyant superhuman intelligence, Frank Lloyd Wright. But before we tackle the outlaw gentleman Wright, we must take a look at the legendary fighter pilots who performed all the outlawed “hotdog stunts, outside loops, buzzing, flat-hatting, hedge-hopping, and flying under bridges.” All of the aforementioned and “dog fighting” could lead to a court-martial offense if the aircraft were destroyed.⁹ To qualify for the outlaw status, one had to create the “legend” and be “elected.” Elegare refers to choice and elegere to legend (from the Greek logos: word or law). To achieve legendary status, one was born out of the law (or word) and was chosen for the unrestricted love of freedom. The outlaw was born of love—the erotic and rebellious kind.

This special status carries with it special privileges and responsibilities. Since the outlaw does not sing the same tune as the other birds in the forest, he must be a percussive bird, the striking red-headed woodpecker. In Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker, Spengler's organic theory has been updated. Why do civilizations rise and fall? Why do some individuals maintain dynamic energy, defying all preconceived notions of human potential? It is due to the woodpecker's role in society and history. He is not obsequious; he does not conform. He strikes his rythmic patterns on decayed trees; he warns the civilization that there is disease. “Humanity has advanced … not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious and immature.”¹⁰ The notorious woodpecker is the outlaw in a forest of obedient happy singers. His supreme responsibility is seeking out the truth about humanity's health. “Humanity, in its closest hour to the truth, ops for the lie.”¹¹ So the woodpecker is dedicated to dropping the dynamite (truth) on those who ask no questions or lie to themselves.

In the Essential Insanities Department at Outlaw College, Robbins states the difference between the outlaw and everybody else:

Inessential insanities get one in trouble with oneself. Essential insanities get one in trouble with others. Essential insanities are those impulses one instinctively senses are virtuous and correct, even though peers may regard them as coo coo.¹²

It is not easy being an outlaw. Today the moral distinctions may appear blurred. For Plato, it is simple: To know the good is to do the good. But what or who knows what is ultimately good or right? The answer is Love. According to Robbins, it knows no laws; all one can do is aid and abet it. The woodpecker chooses to do what is necessary and right with heroic daring. His love of freedom is only matched by the love of choice:

The word that puts the free in freedom and takes the obligation out of love. The word upon which all adventure, all exhiliration, all meaning, all honor depends. The word the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar. The word that no mirror can turn around. In the beginning was the word, and the word was CHOICE.¹³

WOODPECKER: PECKERWOOD

“Peckerwood” is an appellation affectionately thrown around by the “right stuff” characters. This is a respect for the outlaw behavior in the fighter pilots. The phrases “miserable peckerwood”¹⁴ and “augered in”¹⁵ are references to those who perform outlaw stunts. A woodpecker's exclusive membership is guaranteed in this fraternity. Ah, the freedom of the maverick bird! He is the true anarchist among his colleagues. This elevated status can, however, produce hubris.¹⁶ If the outlaw's swollen ego inflates, he may trip over it. If one's character is one's fate, as the Greeks believed, then a character flaw such as the hubris could diminish brilliance and destroy potential. The hero's nemesis is the inflated status beyond the hierarchy. The outlaw must learn to control his ego.

Perhaps the astronauts demonstrated this hubris more than other Wolfe outlaw gentlemen. In July 1989, we commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the lunar landing. According to Wolfe, the media projected only the aura of the heroic seven who prepared for the voyage. James Reston and the press glossed over the astronauts’ inadequacies and promoted “duty, faith, and country” as the theme for these risk-takers. It is interesting that six out of seven astronauts saw no combat nor were they true test-pilots. They may have gone to college (scholastic validation), but warriors they were not. On the other hand, Yeager was passed over because he only lacked the academic degree. The outlaw gentlemen is an amalgam of scholar and warrior. So who possessed the right stuff?

If anyone possessed the right stuff, it is Baldassare Castiglione. One of Wolfe's favorite historical figures was Samuel Johnson, whose inspiration came from Castiglione. He recommended the Courtier as “the best book that ever was written on good breeding.”¹⁷The Book of the Courtier insists that public recognition, fame, and glory are the true and only prizes for human accomplishments. The courtier must not be ostentatious or enter into self-praise or affection. All must be accomplished with that untranslatable word sprezzatura: effortless or graceful mastery. With nonchalance, but decorum, he must accomplish the heroic feats. Castiglione's gentleman possesses more than just manners; he has the desire to admit and to correct faults or defects in himself. Wolfe's outlaw gentleman, Ken Kesey, admits, “We blew it.”¹⁸ He realized it when it went wrong, but when a Mercury astronaut “screwed the pooch” and blew it, there was no admission of error. NASA wouldn't accept blame either. “It was a malfunction.”¹⁹ NASA engineers had official immunity for most of the screw-ups. They were not responsible. Yet, the courtier must be responsible and prepared to kill and be killed; he must exhibit the heroic spirit of Hercules.²⁰

Were these astronauts heroes? Were they true outlaw gentlemen? Probably not. Thomas Carlyle, an early 19th century poet (a Wolfe favorite), might have answered the question with this: “Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egoism are bred in [the hero's] heart … it need[s] to be cast out of his heart.”²¹ In six lectures on heroes, hero worship, and the heroic in history, this Scot examined the need for heroes. [In Brecht's Galileo, Andrea Sarti says, “It is an unhappy country that has no heroes.” Galileo's reply: “It is an unhappy country that needs heroes.” (George Roche's A World Without Heroes, p. 1.)] In his fifth lecture, he analyzed Bobby Burns, Dr. Johnson and Bozzy, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He accounts for the lack of heroes by stating that it is difficult to find any in a skeptical era.²² He distinguishes between the bringers of the light and the seekers of it.²³ He concludes that in a mechanical (read industrial) era, there can be no hero or believer. It's impossible. He points out that there are no eyeless heroes (blinded Samsons) to bring down the Philistine Mill. (And, for that matter, I feel there are no eyeless Oedipus heroes who are capable of seeing their errors.) By the end of the 19th century, Max Weber believed the lack of heroism and heroes could be blamed upon the rising bourgeoisie classes which have seldom before and never since displayed heroism.²⁴

His ethnocentric view states that emancipation from Catholic tradition and control produced high-achieving Protestants who took far more and greater risks. “The Catholic is quieter; he prefers a life of the greatest security to a life of risk and excitement, even though it may bring the chance of gaining honor and riches.”²⁵ Weber admits this may be an incomplete characterization; there may be exceptions. For example, he sees the French Calvinists the way he sees Northern German Catholics. His stereotypes may be offensive to us today, but they were, nevertheless, his observations at the time. So why are the outlaws Protestants and Jews? Weber answers that, in Catholicism, the heretic was always punished.²⁶ Deviation, nonconformity, or any outlaw behavior belonged to the Jews or Protestants. Carlyle's choice outlaw was Moses—“an outlaw tending his … herds.”²⁷ Other Hebraic leaders, Esau and Jacob, are also mentioned by Weber, and Wolfe refers to Ken Kesey as Esau, the one who sold his birthright.²⁸ Are we to speculate that Jacob (Timothy Leary) was the heir apparent?

Now that the historical origin of the outlaw has been traced back to at least the second millennium B.C.E., it is appropriate that we begin at the chronological origin of all Tom Wolfe's selected outlaws. In his Ph.D. dissertation of 1956, he presented a sociological analysis of the League of American Writers (LAW). His research took him to the Bureau of Census, government bulletins, court records, and the secretarial archives of literary associations and organizations.

The premise of his thesis rests upon the belief that Communism had infiltrated the literary community (LAW et al) and taken advantage of the social anomie of the craft. It was through cocktail parties that it could politically manipulate and exploit authors and dramatists for the Bolshevik cause. The precursor to the LAW was the John Reed Club which had promoted ideological conformity within their ranks.²⁹ The Communist Party had encouraged literary cliques that hampered any individualism so that behavioral conformity was rewarded and personal deviation was not tolerated.³⁰

As a result, the LAW released a number of public resolutions passed at its monthly meetings. For example, the Hearst empire was condemned. Many bourgeois Soviet and American individuals were denounced: Shostakovich, James T. Farrell, and Trotsky.³¹ At the Association of Western Writers (1937), the organizations opening exhortation was “Writers of the World, Unite,” The propaganda was very clear: “A writer was doomed not only to loneliness but to actual deterioration of his artistic faculties” if he broke away from the organic link of writers.³²

The LAW began to take punitive action against various writers and started to support political causes that elevated or promoted its members. Manifestoes were issued (mostly in New Masses), and the writers who hoped to make a living adhered closely to the sanctioned goals. They had succumbed to and had become totally immersed in Party objectives,³³ even though the vast majority were not even official Communist Party members! They had rallied behind political, social, and moral causes that increased their visibility as an organization. Using Machiavellian methods of physical and verbal abuse and ostracism—the ultimate punishment, the LAW succeeded in rewarding the soldier literatus for his undivided loyalty for at least a decade.³⁴ Everyone knew it was professionally useful to belong to the organization if you wanted to acquire the bourgeois lifestyle that it publicly condemned.

As soon as the LAW achieved the prestigious, secure, omnipotent status, the outlaws registered their dissatisfaction and seceded. Archibald MacLeish became Librarian of Congress and issued a denunciation of the writers. He was called a Judas Iscariot.³⁵ Gertrude Atherton left to protest the LAW's survey and its position on the pro-Loyalists in the Spanish-American War.³⁶ Without these prominent figures and their defiance of the mindlessness of the literati, it might be argued that American writers were not just the tools of the Communist Party, but slaves to the status quo as well.

In Wolfe's dissertation, he relies on the lexicon from Whyte's Organization Man [McLuhan says Mr. Whyte saw how the oral revolution had replaced a book culture. He notes that the executive is (in 1956) a product of the print technology or the “Protestant Ethic” as Max Weber and Mr. Whyte have called it.]³⁷ and Selznick's Organizational Weapons to define the social issues and conflicts as confronted by the alienated massman. In all of Wolfe's writings, except Bonfire of the Vanities, the outlaw gentleman wins because he has not been moved by fear, egotism, or social position, but by a personal sense of alienation. He cannot be persuaded to pledge his allegiance to a dogma or an institution; he is a law unto himself. The system can ask him to perform (or to conform), but he has the choice and excercises it frequently:

As institutions weaken, the individual loses the sense that he has a secure status and accepted functions with society; an alienation develops, a psychological atomizations.³⁸

As long as he maintains that social anomie, there is self-respect and self-improvement. But, if the social issues are decided by the … contending systems which demand, win, as well as maintain enduring loyalties,³⁹ the ultimate outcome is of tragic consequence. [Sherman McCoy did not win against the system, because it was operating on the principle of loyalty and Favor Banks.] By adhering to the vows of organizational life, (in the vain hope that it's American to do so), the outlaw gentleman could lose himself, get absorbed, and shirk personal responsibility since the organization or system is supposed to pay! “The individual had to prove himself—no authorative commands, but autonomous decision, good sense, and responsible conduct for citizenship.”⁴⁰ This is Weber's Gentleman Ideal.⁴¹ Lawlessness enabled him to pursue without restriction and to attain all-around self-perfection and charisma.

Charisma: gift of grace; to characterize self-appointed leaders who are followed by those who are in distress and those who need to follow because they believe the leader(s) is extraordinarily qualified. Max Weber's definition of charisma is critically important to Wolfe and the selected outlaw gentlemen. Charismatic heroes, prophets, and charlatans are often mistaken for outlaw gentlemen because the masses believe in anything in order to not believe in nothing. According to Weber, [Weber's conception is a continuation of Carlyle's “Hero and Hero Worship.”] the dichotomy is: masses vs. personality and routine vs. creativity; conventions of ordinary people vs. inner freedom of the pioneering; institutional rules vs. the spontaneous individual; drudgery, boredom of ordinary existence vs. imaginative flight of the genius.⁴²

As we shall see, Wolfe is reverential to those who, like himself, have a powerful impact on the masses. His secretarial skills in the holy office of chronicler demand that he choose his words and his examples wisely. One of his earliest choices was the Last American Hero, Junior Johnson.

It wasn't Wolfe who turned Junior Johnson into a legend. It was Junior who did it. He learned the art of outlaw bootlegging from his father. Without patronage, he challenged the system and won NASCAR with a Chevrolet, of all things. Unheard of! Wolfe compared him to Robin Hood, Jesse, James, and David against Goliath. Before Wolfe arrived, Vance Packard had visited this neck of the woods and wrote about them in the 40s. Not much had changed. Wolfe's generation witnessed how the automobile had not only increased efficiency in transportation but became a symbol of leisure time and social standing. Even before Packard and the automobile, Veblen discussed rowdy delinquents as a product of leisure in the late Victorian era.⁴³

Wolfe's rowdy bunch of outlaws received either no pay or pathetic salaries to test-drive cars. And even in Right Stuff, Wolfe notes that test-pilots were paid miserably. Anyway, Detroit wouldn't give Junior any financial support or even talk with him, because Junior took the “pure” or total risk as no other driver.⁴⁴ He was the perfect oxymoron: an outlaw gentleman. As a prosperous sober hillbilly burgher in North Wilkesboro, bred from the Scotch-Irish tradition, his family had been moonshining for centuries. The Appalachian's hollows became outlaw territory for those who could risk and beat the system. It's reminiscent of the unionizing in Matewan, West Virgina, where courageous mountaineers confronted those coal company bosses and demanded that Blacks and I-talians be given their equal rights with union protection. That town probably buried as many heroes in one day as the 32 (out of 78) Korean War Medal of Honor winners who were from the small towns in or near Appalachia. Wolfe cites them for valor.⁴⁵ The heroism of these mountaineers is matchless.

MONTANI SEMPER LIBERI: MOUNTAINEERS ARE ALWAYS FREE.

This is the West Virgina state motto. Formerly a part of Virgina, West Virgina seceded from it in 1861 and formed its own government, which was granted statehood in 1863. Chuck Yeager was yet another Appalachian rebel who played outlaw gentleman. He was “Master of the Sky.”⁴⁶ There was no limit to his potential as a test-pilot. He stayed cool, maintained decorum, and still exceeded all expectation. He was DaVinci's Vitruvian Man. He possessed the essence of the Right Stuff:

After all, the right stuff … was that a man … should put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experiences, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment … to do so in a cause that means something to thousands, to a people, a nation, to humanity, to God.⁴⁷

By joining the military, he thought he could improve his economic and social status. He could avoid the coal mines. The army offered an escape to new territories, challenges, and perhaps some rewards, along with the opportunity to fight as a single-combat warrior against the evil empire and a chance to break the sound barrier because it “didn't exist anyway.” He knew that risking his life and being prepared to die was essential for this privilege. Falling out of the sky at 21,000 feet may be one of the hazardous aspects of the job, but somebody has got to do it! Always in code, his parachute rolled up, helmet in the crook of his arm, he waited patiently for the ambulance. After nearly losing it and his life as a pilot, he went on to fly B-57s in South East Asia.

One of Yeager's best friends was Pancho Barnes, born Florence Lowe, daughter of a wealthy inventor. This San Marino aristocrat defected to the other side and became a gun-running pilot for the Mexican revolutionaries in the 1920s.⁴⁸ Hence the nickname Pancho. In the early 30s, she broke Earhart's air speed record for women. She's the only female in Wolfe's writings who even comes close to this definition of outlaw. She was portrayed as a sophisticated dresser, but in the film it's less apparent. Unfortunately Wolfe didn't develop this woman's relationship with Yeager. She was, after all, a close friend, member of the cadre, and an aviational inspiration. Evidently she and her sister were very good friends with him. [This information came to author courtesy of Jimo Perini, San Francisco photo-journalist.]

Another outlaw is the late Robert Noyce, inventor of the integrated circuit system. Whereas Pancho was from Episcopalian background. Wolfe tells us that Noyce is a Congregationalist. There is no hierarchy in that Church.⁴⁹ Their dogma of an autonomous congregation was derived from hatred of the British system of class and status. Dirk Hansen identified Noyce as a son of an Iowa minister and graduate of Grinnel College.⁵⁰ Wolfe states that the Noyce boys were polite and proper in all outward appearances but thrown out of college nonetheless.⁵¹ He was a prankster and an innovator. After being arrested for stealing a pig for a luau, he decided to enjoy new scenery in California where Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, took in Noyce. Soon Noyce defected from Fairchild (Shockley's company). He joined the dissidents.⁵² Noyce “betrayed” Shockley and founded Intel to work on his “no-connecting-wires circuitry.”⁵³ If it hadn't been for Noyce, there probably would not have been a successful lunar landing in July 1969.

Last year Noyce fired Sematech's manager, Castrucci, because “it's mission is too critical to this nation to allow Castrucci to manage it.” According to Noyce, the government consortium is managing “not through hierarchy, but achieving consensus before taking action.”⁵⁴ It would appear that he was an outlaw even in the manner in which he has supervised recent projects.

HONESTY IS THE BEST DISGUISE IN THE COPS AND ROBBERS GAME.⁵⁵

“Outlaws, by definition, were people who had moved off of dead center and were in some kind of Edge City.”⁵⁶ This is Wolfe's description of one of the most notorious outlaws in literary history. (William Burroughs is probably a super-outlaw.) Kesey secured his immortality on Mr. Olympus when he headed up the psychedelic movement and became what he was as well as what society wanted him to be: an outlaw. “If society wants me to be an outlaw, then I'll be one—a damned good one. That's something people need at all times.”⁵⁷ To qualify for that status, he performs his stunts until he escapes to Tijuana by faking his own death. In disguise, he “enters the land of all competent outlaws—Mexico.”⁵⁸ Wolfe compares him to Bogart in Casablanca.⁵⁹ Like Odysseus, he returns incognito. Without detection, he begins a life of secrecy—a fugitive—until a speed chase on the Bayshore freeway. It's after his arrest that Wolfe first meets him in the San Mateo jail. “With a kind of country politeness, Kesey warns Wolfe that he's working on the unification of the world through kairos.”⁶⁰

The Hell's Angels were outlaws by choice,⁶¹ unlike Kesey who was made an outlaw by the San Mateo police department. And when the Young Turks (apostate Unitarians) arrived to check out the Day-Glo heroes, Kesey and the Pranksters were invited to the conference at Asilomar. Wolfe notes (in italics) that the Unitarians are people who stand up for the right to dissent and nonconformity. The Unitarians … “dressed in their sports shirts, tamping their pipes, joined in on the fun until it got to be too much. Dr.____ of the Church's liberals had left the conference in protest.”⁶² The following year the Young Turks had a separate conference in the High Sierras. The radical Protestant sect and the Pranksters had found a common denominator: being outlaws. When asked to merge, Kesey replied that the “Christ trip” had been done and failed.

Ten years later in an interview with Paul Krassner in City, Kesey candidly indicated Hollywood's control over the production of Cuckoo's Nest and refused the ＄300,000 contract offer to participate in an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test film. He wasn't going to sell to the highest bidder. He had refused to see Cuckoo's Nest, because he felt the director raped his script.⁶³ He had maintained that the truth of Cuckoo or a potential Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test cannot be understood or honestly portrayed on a screen. This is an interesting statement in contrast to Wolfe's next film, Bonfire. As Wolfe has stated, only in print is the memory jogged. I think it may be nearly impossible to translate Wolfe's physiology of realism onto the screen for Bonfire, although it appears to have been accomplished in The Right Stuff.

So, back to Kesey … Maybe he didn't blow it. He appears to have remained true to his outlaw-gentleman reputation. What is it that Kesey and the other outlaws possess? Are they “in possession (or absorption) of the deity?” Are they vessels of the divine? Certainly all of Wolfe's outlaws are religious or at least appear to be so, but that doesn't mean the same thing. [Max Weber identified the objective functions of a religion as the abnegation or rejection of the world and the legitimization of wealth. See Wolfe's “Worship of Art,” Harper's, Oct. 1984. p. 62.] It seems to be more like a mystical unity. Just as Socrates’ daimonion resided within, so too, does the deity that Weber calls the unio mystica. The believer becomes a tool for the divine will and an instrument for historical progress. Even the “astronaughties” in their staged lab revolts, earn an “aura” of perfection and John Glenn's dissenting Protestant fervor enable the holy seven to “possess the deity.” However, out of the seven, Wally Shirra seemed to be the only one to express disapproval of shoddy aircraft.⁶⁴ If that space vessel carried or possessed the deified, then it had better be perfect, too. (Without being too irreverant toward the astronauts, I have yet to give all of them the official status of outlaw gentlemen.)

Finally, we arrive at Wolfe's first anti-hero, Sherman McCoy. There are not high spiritual principles in his soul. He has not taken any risks in his entire life nor has he questioned authority. He is in the bond market. “How many [men] would have gone to work or stayed at work on cut-throat Madison Avenue if there had been a twenty-three-percent chance (nearly one in four) of dying from it”⁶⁵ McCoy only takes risks and gambles with other people's money. He is bourgeois, and incapable of anything heroic. The proletarians have a much better chance and a greater desire to accomplish the heroic. As chief bond trader, he has no “holy Beruf” or calling. McCoy's job is a means to an end. It provides little satisfaction or personal fulfillment. He has played by the rules, gone to the right schools, married the right girl, and always accepted his father's advice. “Each step down … is irrepressible adherence to the moral code of Father.”⁶⁶ His love of money is not compatible with heroism.⁶⁷ Wolfe says prosperity and vanity undo all his characters. Even his pimps (who Veblen called spurious aristocracy) fall from grace for the same reasons. There are no heroes in the 1980s. If there were any, they wouldn't be in New York City. Bernard Goetz is a perfect example of a nonheroic “hero.” Like McCoy, he is suspicious of every person who doesn't look like himself. Both are xenophobic. Living in an insular and artificial vacuum. McCoy doesn't want to blow his security, but he is careless, thoughtless, loveless, callous, and selfish. “The Master of the Universe” is a script role that he has memorized, but he's constantly out of character. He has bought the “chic bourgeois trip” without questioning. He is a hollow man [See T. S. Eliot's poem “The Wasteland” and Hollow Men by Michael Gold, whom Wolfe cites in his dissertation.] who relates only to status, power, and success. He thinks he runs the universe, but he is slave to the universe. McCoy appears to support the Protestant ethic: one must make money, but not justify God's goodness through prosperity, rather, to stay competitive in a dog-eat-dog world. The Machiavellian world of high finance is a cut-throat environment. He doesn't view his bond-trading as a way to improve the world; his decisions benefit only himself, his family, and his investors. He must damage the competition and beat out the others vying for control and power. He is, after all, worshipping the “bitch-goddess”—success.

What has happened to Wolfe's outlaw gentlemen? They're not in New York City. There we find only crooks, criminals, fools, and hustlers. There are no heroes. But if McCoy's character is his fate, he must be responsible for destroying his dream, or was it snatched away from him? No hero, no outlaw gentleman, would blame society for his fate, but that's what Wolfe wants us to do. To me, fate followed its own inalterable course, and McCoy is not a victim of society. This is not a travesty of justice. McCoy chooses his fate. He is not impotent against society; he simply errored in his choices. He is not courageous enough to speak up. In short, his obsession with materialism is a total negations of every value associated with the Protestant ethic and Benjamin Franklin's secular ethics. Conspicuous consumption, at the expense of the soul, leads to hubris and not to moral or intellectual excellence. Due to his vanity, he pays the ultimate price: deprivation of freedom.

I HAVEN'T DUCKED THE TRUTH⁶⁸

Shortly upon receiving his doctorate at Yale, Wolfe, joined the “Genteel Beast” and began a career in journalism. In one of his earliest articles for the new rival of New Yorker, New York magazine, he established himself as an incendiary upstart who spoke out against the conformity, allegiance, loyalty, and monolithic apathy of a bureaucracy under the dictatorship of William Shawn. In 1965 his vitriolic attach of Shawn's “ownership” of the literary community got him into trouble with everybody. He had assaulted the employer of nearly every writer on the East Coast. Even the Orthodox Columbia Journalism Review declared his attack as “ominous for the entire future of America.”⁶⁹

Every writer—including a White House correspondent and academic colleagues—accused him of being reckless, breaking the cardinal rule, and betraying the monolithic writing community. He had really stirred up the hornet's nest. He had exposed the hypocrisies of an institution that purported to be committed to freedom of expression and freedom of the press but, instead, had become an organization absorbed with itself and the perpetuation of the status quo. The loyalty of these employees was undivided. There could be no dissent, no individualism, and no choice. They had all bought into the system. Their power, prestige, and income level were the results of obsequious service to the almighty sphinx, William Shawn. They were helping him perpetuate a myth and an image which, if destroyed, would lower the status of every writer with him. Wolfe's arsenal of literary devices and techniques enabled him to use the ultimate weapon of truth to smoke out the secure and apathetic Shawn and his pawns!

Subsequently, Wolfe began his audacious apology which culminated in his notoriety on two continents. He had catapulted himself beyond the hierarchy and achieved the outlaw-gentleman status among his colleagues, peers, and most importantly, the reading public. He knew that social and political ostracism could guarantee him either literary exile or preeminent social critic. He took a risk only more experienced and respected writers dream about. His incendiary articles and caustic commentary on the bureaucratic New Yorker and the monolithic literary community ignited a whole new approach to journalism—a new league about all the others.

As a result, he awakened the entire nation and a new generation to the personal responsibilities we each must bear. His typewriter began to record the most socially rebellious period in recent American history. His diverse and encyclopediac interest broadened and integrated our understanding of ourselves. With paradox and grace, but exactitude, his writing style has engrossed millions of readers. In his books, articles, and fugitive writings, he educates us about our love of independence and choice. His American sociological tapestry is filled with the art clerisy and self-appointed authorities who claim to be advocates for the customer, client, and public worshipper. He questions their right to dictate the preferences or opinions of the American proletariat. Once again his outlaw views irritate and agitate the bureaucratic art world. He has promoted the individual's duty and right to choose what will adorn his environment in the city hall plaza. In Portland, Oregon, Wolfe attacked the “maverick whoop-whoop group”⁷⁰ who selected the symbolic statue Portlandia to personify the city. The real experts, the people, were not consulted.

In addition to his radical views on modern art and sculpture, he has excelled in deconstructing and deflating the Bauhaus movement in America. He has much to criticize about modularity and mediocrity vs. deviation and individualism. And since it may be that a civilization's soul is revealed in its architecture (the most utilitarian of the arts). Wolfe takes a quiver of arrows for his assault on the “form follows function” style. Greenough's aphorism was bought by Henri Sullivan, inherited by the Bauhaus, and boomeranged in Chicago. Wolfe blamed the movement for creating a mediocre modular box of conformity.

The Bauhaus “more is less” principle became the “less is a bore” slogan of Robert Venturi. He mocked the Bauhaus principles by questioning the premises of the dogma. He became an apostate [Apostate: to revolt, to take a stand.] along with Edward Durrell Stone, Sarrinen, Lapidus, Portman, Goff, and Greene who also revolted. (According to Wolfe, virtually all were banished.) After Stone's Kennedy Center was built, his name was anathema.⁷¹ It wasn't his career that ended, only his prestige. Into this pool of productive non-academic architects, jumped Frank Lloyd Wright who, likewise, had not paid his dues to the Bauhaus school. Nevertheless, these architects made unique contributions, and each maintained a personal and professional dignity—especially Wright.

Wolfe probably spends as much time in front of the mirror as Wright once did. It is well known that Wright impressed others with his costumes and haughty demeanor, as does Wolfe. It is this flair for personal style that separates the outlaw. It is, however, much more than a fashion statement; neither Wolfe nor Wright cared about fashion or fads. Wolfe's critics have called him a dandy,⁷² a Wolfe in fop's clothing.⁷³ Wolfe admits his taste is “counter-Bohemian.” His clothes seem to reflect the “southern English tradition of the warrior-aristocrat.”⁷⁴ According to John Taylor's interview, “his clothes are actually (to use the rhetoric of the left) a subversive political gesture.”⁷⁵ Wolfe's response:

A rebel in a free country is the rebel within the status group. Clothes are a way of treating the literary-status world as cavalierly as I or any other writer would treat the outside world.⁷⁶

Wolfe's friend, Eddie Hayes, explains that Wolfe is a “very Macho guy.”⁷⁷ This, too, is an outlaw-gentleman trait. It is ironic that Wolfe's manners and gentleness seem to diminish any machismo in his interviews. He criticizes himself for errors and excuses himself to leave the table. His tastes, style, and demeanor appear impeccable. He states that “clothes are a doorway that most easily leads you to the heart of an individual; it's the way they reveal themselves” and that he “wears white to irritate people as a harmless form of aggression.”⁷⁸

In 1965, Wolfe had dinner with Marshall McLuhan. In The Pump House Gang, he provides a detailed record of what was said and worn by McLuhan Wolfe notes that the McLuhan's 89¢ trick snap-on tie would bob and around while he spoke.⁷⁹ McLuhan's words were permanently etched in Wolfe's mind as he kept track of his tie. McLuhan had a lot to say about everything, including clothing. And most of it later appeared in War and Peace in the Global Village. He references, fashion and clothing by citing James Joyce's Prankquean. He describes the Prankqueen as “the very expression of war and aggression. In her life, clothing is weaponry.” And quoting Joyce directly: “I'm the queen of the castle, and you're the dirty rascal.” McLuhan concludes that clothing is “… anti-enemies … anti-competitors … anti-boredom.”⁸⁰ He mentions the advancements in European history such as stirrups and gunpowder, but he insists that Thomas Carlyle's mention of Gutenberg in Sartor Resartus is a form of social clothing.⁸¹ So armor and weaponry for the writer and printer are letters and words. All are a form of human clothing and a systematic form of aggression.⁸²

Individualism (eccentricity) is alive in Wolfe! Clothes, like architecture, may be the doorway that opens onto the individual's status. Wolfe admits he loves to choose and hates to conform. He is a heretic who has lived outside the status group. In a recent interview he admits, “When I'm called a conservative … it really just means you are a heretic, you've seen something unorthodox.”⁸³ A heretic literally means one who chooses. What could be more American than the freedom to be as off-center as possible.

The freedom of the outlaw gentleman has been Tom Wolfe's cherished value. It is personal freedom, commensurate to personal responsibility, that promotes and sustains innovation and individualism. A civilization, too, cannot survive without dynamic, creative virtuosi. In the early nineteenth century, the violinist Paganini stunned his critics and audiences with Pyrotechnic artistry. He “pushed the envelope” for violin technique and performance. Composers were challenged. So, too, Wolfe's flamboyance spills into every aspect of his life. His writings and personal signature are adorned with serifs. Without his neologistic phrases and words, his stream-of-consciousness, tangential, and ancillary style of writing, he would not be the twentieth-century virtuoso that he is—uno virtuoso con sprezzatura.

EPILOGUE

On the soil of Virgina, the old Dominion state, were born eight presidents, Wolfe, and this writer. It was Jefferson and other Deists who challenged American Protestantism with a new moral truth: a deep and abiding faith in the innate goodness of all men and women. The soul was redefined by Deists, Unitarians, and later, by Transcendentalists, who viewed moral perfection as a struggle against material progress. The Civil War may have been the dramatization of this polarized concept—master vs. slave; white vs. black; elite vs. poor and powerless. There were disparities, inequalities, and illusions of freedom in antebellum America. Have we resolved the dicotomies? No. In The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe gives the American public a twentieth-century glimpse of New York City on a collision course. The values of personal freedom and individual responsibility are disappearing in the new “gold rush.” If we lose these intrinsic qualities that reside within the outlaw gentleman, we will betray ourselves. Sherman McCoy, who is the negation of the heroic honorable chivalrous gentleman, is corrupted by his insatiable thirst for wealth, power, and prestige. His loss of self-esteem while in mad pursuit of personal happiness through material security is a lesson we never seem to learn. The Faustian lifestyle has its inevitable consequences. Is America listening?

Notes

1. Tom Wolfe, “Birth of the ‘New Journalism’: Eyewitness Report of Tom Wolfe,” New York, Feb. 14, 1972, p. 34.

2. Tom Wolfe, Right Stuff, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979), p. 43.

3. Plato, Republic, 2.375.C

4. I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates, (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 52.

5. Ibid., pp. 111–113.

6. Thorstein Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class, (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 185.

7. Ibid., pp. 290–291.

8. Tom Wolfe. From Bauhaus to Our House, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981), p. 28.

9. Tom Wolfe, Right Stuff, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979), p. 31.

10. Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker, (New York: Bantam, 1980), p. 19.

11. Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction, (New York: Ballantine, 1972), p. 268.

12. Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker, (New York: Bantam, 1980), p. 77.

13. Ibid., p. 190.

14. Tom Wolfe, Right Stuff, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979), p. 54.

15. Ibid., p. 62.

16. Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1970), p. 177.

17. Kate Simon, A Renaissance Tapestry, (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 175.

18. Tom Wolfe, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, (New York: Bantam, 1969), p. 358.

19. Tom Wolfe Right Stuff, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979), p. 290.

20. Baldassare Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, (Baltimore: Penguin, 1967), p. 42.

21. Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, (London: Levey et al., 1841), Lecture 5, p. 275.

22. Ibid., p. 276.

23. Ibid., p. 256.

24. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic, (New York: Scribner's, 1958), p. 37.

25. Ibid., p. 40.

26. Ibid., p. 36.

27. Ibid., p. 261.

28. Ibid., p. 282.

29. Tom Wolfe, League of American Writers, Diss. Yale 1956, p. 52.

30. Ibid., p. 78.

31. Ibid., pp. 108–110.

32. Ibid., pp. 134–135.

33. Ibid., p. 220.

34. Ibid., p. 164.

35. Ibid., p. 257.

36. Loc. cit.

37. Marshall McLuhan, Verbi-Voco-Visual Explorations, (New York: Something Else Press, Inc., 1967), pp. 15–21.

38. Philip, Selznick, The Organizational Weapon, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. 1952), pp. 281–282.

39. Ibid., p. 333.

40. Gerth and Mills, From Weber, (New York: Oxford, 1966), pp. 52–53.

41. Ibid., p. 436.

42. Ibid., pp. 52–53.

43. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, (New York: Random House, 1899), Viking Press edition, p. 185.

44. Tom Wolfe, Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flaked Stream-Lined Baby, (New York: Noonday Press, 1973), p. 154.

45. Ibid., p. 163.

46. Tom Wolfe, Right Stuff, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979), p. 59.

47. Ibid., p. 24.

48. Ibid., p. 51.

49. Tom Wolfe, “Tinkerings of Robert Noyce: How the Sun Rose on the Silicon Valley,” Esquire, Dec. 1983. p. 353.

50. Dirk Hansen, New Alchemists, (Boston: Little Brown, 1982), p. 91.

51. Tom Wolfe, “Tinkerings of Robert Noyce: How the Sun Rose on the Silicon Valley,” Esquire, Dec. 1983, p. 348.

52. Dirk Hansen, New Alchemists, (Boston: Little Brown, 1982), p. 92.

53. Ibid., p. 94.

54. “Noyce Forces out Sematch's No. 2,” The San Jose Mercury News, 21 Mar. 1989, Sec. F. pp. 1, col. 5–6, and p. 13, col. 1–3.

55. Tom Wolfe, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, (New York: Bantam, 1969), p. 309.

56. Ibid., p. 235.

57. Ibid., p. 235.

58. Ibid., p. 237.

59. Ibid., p. 299.

60. Ibid., p. 115.

61. Ibid., p. 326.

62. Ibid., p. 65.

63. Paul Krassner, “McMurphy,” City Magazine, Dec. 23, 1975, p. 27.

64. Tom Wolfe, Right Stuff, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979), p. 189.

65. Ibid., p. 23.

66. N. Lehman, “Bonfire of the Vanities,” Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 260, No. 6, Dec. 1987, p. 104.

67. Bonnie Angelo, “Master of His Universe,” Time, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 90.

68. D. Lehman, “An Unleashed Wolfe,” Newsweek, Oct. 26, 1987, p. 84.

69. Tom Wolfe, “New Journalism: A la Recherche des Which Thickets,” New York, Feb. 21, 1972, p. 45.

70. Tom Wolfe, “Cooper Goddess,” Newsweek, July 14, 1986, p. 34.

71. Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House, (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1981), p. 88.

72. Tom Wolfe, “White Gods and cringing natives (views of T. K. Wolfe),” Time, Oct. 19, 1981, pp. 69–70.

73. D. Lehman, “An Unleashed Wolfe,” Newsweek, Oct. 26, 1987, p. 84.

74. John Taylor, “The Book on Tom Wolfe,” New York, Mar. 21, 1988, p. 56.

75. Ibid., p. 58.

76. Ibid., p. 58.

77. Ibid., p. 56.

78. Bonnie Angelo, “Master of His Universe,” Time, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 92.

79. Tom Wolfe, The Pump House Gang, (New York: Bantam, 1968), p. 115.

80. Marshall McLuhan. War and Peace in the Global Village, (New York, Bantam, 1968), pp. 21–22.

81. Ibid., p. 35.

82. Ibid., p. 44.

83. Bonnie Angelo, “Master of His Universe,” Time, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 91.

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