The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

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Tom Wolfe

Macmillan/Picador, New York, 2005; originally published 1965, English

Nonfiction, Art and Cultural History

ISBN: 9780312429126

From the Publisher: In his first book—a collection that launched its author as America's foremost entertainer with something to say—Tom Wolfe took a sharp-eyed look at the American scene of the early 1960s and zeroed in on the exotic forms of status-seeking that flourished across the country from New York to Los Angeles.

He observed the emergence of intriguing art forms and styles of life that had nothing to do with the “elite” culture of the past. In the Low Rent world of the Twist, bouffant hairdos, stock car racing, and rock concerts he found not only a uniquely American energy but also an American aesthetic. In the title piece Wolfe eulogized the flamboyant kustomized kars that California teenagers designed and constructed with a single-minded artistic dedication. And through his eyes we see this new world's most stupendous manifestation: the back-lit plastic city of Las Vegas—“apart from Versailles the only architecturally uniform city in the Western World.”

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