I recently finished reading Tom Wolfe's collection The Pump-House Gang. Through a diverse set of articles, Wolfe pursues a common hypothesis. Basically, after World War II, the middle and lower classes in America and Britain (and to some extent the upper-middle as well) decided that they had no interest in pursuing the traditional mainstream quest for status, because (a) the rich are stodgy and who wants to emulate them anyway, and (b) the rich never really let anyone in anyway. If you're not born into high cultural status, you can't truly achieve it because you'll always be a Johnny-come-lately.

In place of this common quest, various groups pursued status within distinct subcultures. Wolfe writes here about California surfers and bikers, London mods, and other mostly young groups doing their own thing, but doing so within a strong set of conventions that arise within each group. Hugh Hefner in one essay becomes the ultimate exemplar--pursuing a rich lifestyle based on acquisition but never becoming acceptable in mainstream rich circles because he'll ultimately always be someone who made a fortune on skin mags. So Hef literally locks himself in his own world--in fact staying in his house without leaving for months at a time.

Wolfe bogs down for me at times when he gets into the details of different styles; style in and of itself is not very interesting to me, as anyone who has ever seen my wardrobe can attest. But he does say something about a fragmented society, and why perhaps we should cautiously welcome such fragmentation. In fact, he expresses shock at one point when he is on a panel that his fellows talk about all the problems of the mid-'60s, while he is seemingly the only one to notice a major outbreak of happiness among people rebelling against the mainstream.

Oh yeah, and at one point he goes to a titty bar with Marshall McLuhan.

I found this book to be worth reading, but if you want to pick up Wolfe essays on the '60s, I preferred The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.