by Tom Wolfe
How does he do it? At age 69, Wolfe is still wearing out shoe leather (and, given his fashion sense, spats) with fresh reporting on campus dating and Silicon Valley—thus the dual meaning of the title, which refers to humanity's newest obsession and its oldest. In this collection of shorter pieces, Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities; A Man in Full) proves he's still the merry prankster of journalism: Here he's shooting spitballs at the blowhards of The New Yorker (in two of his funniest 1960s exposés, included in a book for the first time); there he's giving an atomic wedgie to TV newsmagazines and allotting a shocking amount of space to the views of gay-bashing soldiers in the searing novella Ambush at Fort Bragg. Wolfe can be cranky and self-righteous when discussing (actually, it's more like dissing and cussing) fellow authors—but he is right to point out that Wolfe-bashers Norman Mailer and John Updike could be jealous because readers aren't exactly abuzz over their recent work. When Wolfe leaves the pulpit for the pavement, his X-ray eyes still crinkle with wonder at every hilarious sideshow of the great American carnival. No one tells it better. (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, $25)
Bottom Line: Up where he belongs
Your Reaction
