Books

Comic Capers: Babblegabble and Mystagoguery

Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine

Tom Wolfe Bantam, $2.75

Well. What's this then? Publishers taking an interest in the Ambrose Bierce profession? The doyen of 'the new journalism' buckling halfway between home plate and first base? Well, nearly faltering.

"His most uproariously funny and right on book to date", claims the blurb on the cover of MG&M, C&V, and I'm in two minds as to whether to take it seriously, or not. Seriously, it seems to me that Tom Wolfe has shed the pizazz that marked his earlier work. The Pump House Gang snaps to mind.

Wolfe is doing here what he has always gone. Finding the nearest scene of the time, and investigating it — thoroughly. Except that where his enthusiasm for his previous subjects carried him along, now those "scenes" seem too decadent to be even reasonably interesting. Also, he has abandoned his, um, carefully exact use of punctuation and an (apparently) extremely loose style: both of which were intended originally to enliven magazine reading, and they did too.

In MG&M, C&V, Wolfe has replaced those concerns with a preoccupation with style and it is to this book's detriment, I'm afraid. The scene that Wolfe has selected to dig his teeth into is the '70's. The material should be familiar enough to hardened Americans, and Wolfe's eye is as perceptive as ever.

The only radical departure from the normal run of things is an acidic 14-page collection of linked sketches by the author, tracing his development from greaser to expense account writer, which comprises the second chapter of MG&M, C&V. Writer's private lives are often messy affairs and when calculators get involved I think it is probably better to leave that side of things to their accountants.

Not until the third chapter does Wolfe take a mouthful of meat. That consists of launching fighters from aircraft carriers and for once Wolfe is almost on top of the situation. His uncanny ability to three- dimensionalise print gives us a glimpse of mechanics positively ensuring that everything is alright. Here, he's closer in spirit to the nuts and bolts of the real life situation, and it even manages to become quite exciting.

The Commercial, coyly subtitled 'a short story', falls flat on its face — its impact initially destroyed by the fact that Muhammed Ali lost his boxing crown not so long ago now. It appears Wolfe is attempting here to inject his persona into the psyche of an athlete — a coloured athlete, mind — when it turns out what he is doing is shepherding this athlete through two garralous PR men who want to make a deodorant advertisement.

Unfortunately, it happens that the athlete is not so forward about coming forward, and so a long segment focusses on his attempts to grasp the conversation amusing, but not delved into with the flair that Wolfe brought to his previous insight. The whole shebang erupts as Wolfe knocks the athlete cold.

The Intelligent Co-ed's Guide. Well, all you need to know usually is how to cope with a veteran of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, who resembles a strange amalgam of Gunter Grass and a Hell's Angel.

The section on Manners, Decor or Decorum ultimately delivers. Funky Chic is exactly what it means and — instead of the patina one might associate with it — here Wolfe gets as really toothy as he does in Honks and Tonks, and Streetfighters. It is almost worth the pain and the sometime unexpected pleasure of the first two thirds.

The major problem with MG&M, C&V is that for a book ostensibly about the 70's it covers far too much ground getting rid of the previous decade before it reaches its target. What I would really like to know is when the publishers concerned are going to release his account of his search for the secret of the Cheops Pyramid, and how he got lost in Morocco en route with Rolling Stone contributing editor Charles Parry, Or his atmospheric series about the Apollo moon shot.

Either of those two efforts are preferable, from the twin viewpoints of actual writing and the depth of coverage, to the sketchiness of Mauve Gloves and Madman, Clutter & Vine.

Patrick O'Dea