Tom Wolfe

Trying to divert myself from 'Campervan Crisis' on Disc Turbo I remembered my dream last night. I dreamt my 'Unauthorized Biography of Architecture' (text now complete, but probably awaiting such additions as 'Mistakes I have Made'- the Marquise de Sade thoughtfully added that to his memoirs, and 'Conspicuous Omissions' explaining why there is no mention of Alberti or Gaudi whatsoever) had been published as one of those Commando comic books I used to love. Now an architecture graphic novel is not such a bad idea! However Asterix might be good enough for me. Then again, what Hollywood did to Michelangelo with The Agony and the Ecstasy would put anything in Commando to shame.

I'm reading Tom Wolfe's 'Electric Kool Aid Acid Test' and I doing it out of a kind of penance. it's extremely hard to write or for that matter read about people who are permanently super stoned, and on occasion, literally stark raving mad. I suspect this is why Wolfe wrote it in the first place, as a kind of challenge. He must have said to himself; 'For my first book I'm going to crawl across America cooped up in a school bus populated by a troop of crazies gulping LSD laced orange juice from the fridge all the time and deduce if this is really an epiphany for mankind..........or not. So I read it with growing respect for all the things he doesn't say rather than what he does, for instance, he never says, which all of us would have at one stage or another 'GOD I HATE THESE PEOPLE!!!' Not once, at least not yet, instead he doggedly chases that epiphany like Bernstein and Woodward, and this, from a man who famously never wears anything but a white suit (with the crazies, your lucky to get indian warpaint at breakfast). That demands respect.