Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe

But they really wondered why Homer Bigart hadn’t shown up. I had done The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.ĭidn’t they wonder why Halberstam didn’t show up? They didn’t fall all over themselves, if they did. I told them that I was from New York magazine. And my name was on the list, so no problem! And I immediately introduced myself to Felicia Bernstein and to Leonard Bernstein. I mean, they put some big desks out there, so you couldn’t get by.

And I said, “My God! 895 Park Avenue! That’s one of the greatest Park Avenue buildings.” And I said, “Somehow I have got to go to this thing.” So I copied down the phone number that was on the invitation to call to respond, and took a chance on it being a committee of some kind - which, in fact, in must have been, because there was a security check outside the door to Leonard Bernstein’s apartment. There, on his desk, was an invitation to this party. And I just started wandering around - everybody was at lunch - poking my nose into other people’s business. Tom Wolfe: It was December of ’69, it must have been, that I learned about this party for the Black Panthers, in the following manner: I was at Harper’s magazine, waiting for my wife-to-be - who was the art director - to get a break so we could go to lunch. Storyboard: How did you get the idea for “Radical Chic”? My questions and comments are in blue, Wolfe’s responses in red. Wolfe envisioned it as a chapter in a “non-fiction novel,” but his “journalistic instinct overcame any literary instinct,” he told me. (Bernstein’s wife “ fled” a party rather than be in a room with Wolfe’s publisher.) At 25,000 words, “Radical Chic” filled a chunk of the magazine. We talked for four hours over two days about “Radical Chic,” his New York account of a January 1970 party that Leonard Bernstein held, at his Park Avenue duplex, for the Black Panthers. (The New York Times, whose Charlotte Curtis was in attendance, ran an account the next day.) It’s a delightfully scathing story, which pissed off more than a few New Yorkers.

Tom Wolfe and I met twice, in his Upper East Side home, and to answer the inevitable question, no: He never wore a white suit.

Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe