Word: bernsteins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...such thoughts present themselves with added force after the publication of Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic, it's only because our reception of Wolfe's book has itself contributed another turn to the screw. Not only do we allow ourselves to feel superior to Leonard Bernstein and his friends, but we also feel a certain superiority over Wolfe himself for exposing them through the methods he chose. After all now, Gloria Steinem didn't like...
...RADICAL CHIC as one is high-handed enough to assume everyone by now knows, grew out of a party-meeting- for the occasion's definition later grew to be the center of the dispute- given last January by Felicia and Leonard Bernstein in order to raise money for the Black Panthers' defense fund. Held in the Bernstein's 13-room, Park Avenue penthouse, the party-meeting featured a number of famous guests- Wolfe mentions most of them- and a collection of lesser known that Felicia had become acquainted with during her years of interest in various civil rights causes- they...
...then with such a curious crew aboard, it's no wonder Radical Chic virtually explodes with some of the funniest and most merciless prose Wolfe has ever written. Take his description of Leonard Bernstein as Jewish father extraordinaire, orchestrating the contending forces of conversation as if it were all just another CBS Children's Concert...
...Tell why!" says Leonard Bernstein. . . . Lenny is on the move. As more than one person in this room knows, Lenny treasures "the art of conversation." He treasures it, monopolizes it, conglomerates it, like a Jay Gould, an Onassis, a Cornfeld of Conversation. Anyone who has spent a three-day weekend with Lenny in the country, by the shore, or captive on some lonesome cay in the Windward islands knows that feeling- the alternating spells of adrenal stimulation and insulin coma as the Great Interrupter, the Village Explainer, the champion of Mental Jotto, the Free Analyst, Mr. Let's Find...
...derision Wolfe heaps on Felicia Bernstein's Mary Astor accent towers over the loving paean he delivers to Carol Doda's plasticene breasts. But then Felicia is in, really in, and Carol, however notoriously, was always out. Felicia is the obvious target for the satirist's scorn. Wolfe could laugh with poor Carol, at her audience and at herself, but he can only laugh at dear Felicia. And so a sharpness enters his voice where it did not previously exist...