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"Infarcted! Tabescent!" is a review of The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe printed in the New York Times Book Review on June 27, 1965. It also featured a "self-portrait" by Wolfe. In a letter to Knox Burger on June 4, 1965, Vonnegut mentioned receiving this assignment, stating that to do it properly "is a ball-buster," and if "they are too chicken to have a staffer do it, then they should pay me a grand."[1]

Summary[]

TomWolfe02 (cropped)

Tom Wolfe, 1988

Wolfe is well-known, "a superb reporter who hates the East and the looks of old people." This work is 22 articles on various topics in his usual "bitchy melody" and bombastic language, which can also become repetitive. Writing so quickly and brilliantly, one wonders if he'll blow up. He has a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale, which allows him to make "zonky conclusions... in scholarly terms." Not only intellectual, Wolfe can keep up with modern culture, loaded with its "facile junk." As a Southerner, Wolfe feels more comfortable there and in the Far West than the East Coast, and he seems to find a strange delight in attacking mostly harmless groups, like the New York art establishment. Wolfe, although 33, tries to cast himself as part of teen culture and against the adult establishment. What he mainly shares with them is that, like all teenagers, he's terrible embarrassed by American adult culture. Vonnegut concludes it an "[e]xcellent book by a genius who will do anything to get attention."[2]

  1. "June 4, 1965," Letters, pg. 97.
  2. "Infarcted! Tabescent!", New York Times Book Review, June 27, 1965, pg. 4, 38.
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