American Spectator interview (2005)
Works
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Tom Wolfe
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine
Tom Wolfe
In Our Time
Tom WolfeStalking the Billion-Footed Beast
Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe:
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Famous Tom Wolfe Quotes
On Kesey's coining of the phrase "on the bus", in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Ch. VI : The Bus; as Paul Grushkin reports, in Dead Letters: The Very Best Grateful Dead Fan Mail (2011), p. 120, the statement became a famous evocation of an attitude:
The phrase became a metaphor for 1960s culture rethinking — if you were "on the bus" you were "with it."
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
"Las Vegas (What?)"
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965)
American Spectator interview (2005)
Source: I am Charlotte Simmons (2004), p. 368-9, winner of the 12th annual The Literary Review Bad Sex Award
“I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph”
On Ken Kesey, in Ch. I : Black Shiny FBI Shoes
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
Context: He talks in a soft voice with a country accent, almost a pure country accent, only crackling and rasping and cheese-grated over the two-foot hookup, talking about —
"—there's been no creativity," he is saying, "and I think my value has been to help create the next step. I don't think there will be any movement off the drug scene until there is something else to move to —"
— all in a plain country accent about something — well, to be frank, I didn't know what in the hell it was all about. Sometimes he spoke cryptically, in aphorisms. I told him I had heard he didn't intend to do any more writing. Why? I said.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph," he said.
He talked about something called the Acid Test and forms of expression in which there would be no separation between himself and the audience. It would be all one experience, with all the senses opened wide, words, music, lights, sounds, touch —
lightning.
Tom Wolfe Quotes
On Ken Kesey, in Ch. I : Black Shiny FBI Shoes
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
Context: He talks in a soft voice with a country accent, almost a pure country accent, only crackling and rasping and cheese-grated over the two-foot hookup, talking about —
"—there's been no creativity," he is saying, "and I think my value has been to help create the next step. I don't think there will be any movement off the drug scene until there is something else to move to —"
— all in a plain country accent about something — well, to be frank, I didn't know what in the hell it was all about. Sometimes he spoke cryptically, in aphorisms. I told him I had heard he didn't intend to do any more writing. Why? I said.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph," he said.
He talked about something called the Acid Test and forms of expression in which there would be no separation between himself and the audience. It would be all one experience, with all the senses opened wide, words, music, lights, sounds, touch —
lightning.
Tom Wolfe
book
In Our Time
"Entr'actes and Canapes"
In Our Time (1980)
"The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America"
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976)
“A sect, incidentally, is a religion with no political power.”
"The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening"
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976)
"Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast", in Harper’s Magazine (November 1989)
“The demolition derby is, pure and simple, a form of gladiatorial combat for our times.”
"Clean Fun at Riverhead"
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965)
