The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Paperback)

by Tom Wolfe (Author) "What is all this hernia hernia stuff?..." (more)
Key Phrases: downy billows, nanny mafia, real buttonholes, New York, Las Vegas, Phil Spector (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The "streamline baby" in Tom Wolfe's 1965 debut book is a hot rod, but the car's candy colors and wild lines can't match the prose style Wolfe devised to describe them. The title essay--Wolfe's first magazine article--launched the New Journalism, partly because its original title was "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm)..." His voice was more shocking than any subculture he uncovered. Until Wolfe (Ph.D., Yale), nobody struck gold by applying Ph.D.-speak to lowbrow subjects. Kurt Vonnegut famously called this an "excellent book by a genius who will do anything to get attention."

Now that everybody does what Wolfe did, his early essays smack less of genius. But attention must be paid to this pioneering peek into King Pop's tomb. The most startling thing is how soberly sensible most of the prose now appears, except for the title of the first essay, "Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can't Hear You! Too Noisy) Las Vegas!!!" which anticipates the far superior Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Mostly, these articles seem like straightforward introductions to some of the signal figures of the early '60s: hot-rod designer Big Daddy Roth, surf guitarist Dick Dale, teen recording tycoon Phil Spector, Andy Warhol debutante Baby Jane Holzer, the Cassius Clay-era Muhammad Ali. We even glimpse the Beatles in a profile of the yappy DJ Murray the K in "The Fifth Beatle."

The last half of the book focuses more on New York and its denizens' endless combat for social status. The last piece, "The Big League Complex," is like a 1964 warm-up exercise for The Bonfire of the Vanities. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
Features the characters of Phil Spector, Cassius Clay, Las Vegas, the Nanny Mafia and Baby Jane Holzer. Tom Wolfe is also the author of "The Right Stuff", "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", "The Pump House" and "The New Journalism". --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (October 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553380583
• ISBN-13: 978-0553380583
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #92,347 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get It If You Can Find It - Fantastic Read!, November 20, 2004

By	Trevor Seigler (South Carolina) - See all my reviews

Tom Wolfe began his career as a "New Journalist" with this book back in 1965, and when I discovered it some thirty years later I instantly became a fan of what this man is sellin'. The articles collected in here range a wide variety of topics, and even the duller pieces are punctuated with traces of brilliance.

The most memorable for me (seeing as I haven't read it in a few years) deal with some interesting and illuminating topics, both of their time and somehow relevant today:

The title piece dealing with custom cars (what's the hottest reality show staple besides weddings and home decor?)

Phil Spector's oddness (chilling in light of his recent legal troubles)

The beginnings of what would become NASCAR (now the biggest sport in the South)

Cassius Clay AKA Muhammed Ali (the role of the black athelete in American society is still being worked out)

Vegas' rise from the desert

There are countless others, products of their time and yet transcending eras to speak to us today. Again, not every piece works, but it's a credit to the book as a whole that I can't recall which ones were failures.

If you can find this, get it. You'll look at thinks differently afterwords...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ultimate Bathroom Book, June 1, 2006

By	jjlaw "jjlaw" - See all my reviews

This is a collection of short tales about contemporary New York and America written in the early 1960s. As you might expect, Wolfe is a little more rough around the edges here, and so there is a little hit and miss. However, The Last American Hero, about driver Junior Johnson and the early beginnings of NASCAR, is breathtaking - here are the true buds of Wolfe's ideas on American Masculinity that were to flower in The Right Stuff.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This book may be better than I felt it to be , November 2, 2004

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

These essays were the debut of a truly new voice. I not only did not know what to make of most of them when I first read them I really did not understand what the writer was getting at. But at the same time I saw they were filled with brilliant social observation, great wit, a certain humor and an effort at putting the phonys of this world down a peg. Like all really sharp social criticism these works have an element of cruelty in them. So let's say it is really a matter of taste that I did not like them so much. But as I said before it was clear to me then that the writer was tremendously inventive and that he was hitting many real targets in a strong and effective way.