THE AESTHETIC OF BRUTALITY – REVOLT AGAINST ROMANTICISM AND THE AGE OF HIGH MODERNISM

Tom Wolf

Throughout his career Wolfe's subject matter, eccentric literary technique, and bold opinions have aroused much controversy concerning the significance of both New Journalism and his own work. After the publication of The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, some critics objected to Wolfe's unorthodox prose style, although many argued that the work contained innovative studies of popular trends. The critical reaction to The Pump House Gang was predominantly positive; several reviewers singled out Wolfe's portrayal of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner as among his most trenchant studies of class structure and America's obsession with status. Critics widely acclaimed The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for its surreal and vivid descriptions of the 1960s drug culture. C. D. D. Bryan called the book “an astonishing, enlightening, at times baffling, and explosively funny book.” Several reviewers faulted Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, for degrading the integrity of the black power movement and accused Wolfe of biased reporting, while others saw the book as a vigorous critique of liberal naivete. Both The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House met with sharply mixed reviews, but The Right Stuff received almost unanimous praise from critics and audiences alike. “That Wolfe can weave together [the] ragged strands of the astronaut story without minimizing the extraordinary courage, the sometimes incredible technical virtuosity, of these hand-picked space explorers,” one reviewer remarked, “… is a tribute to his skill as a journalist and his sensibility as a student of humanistic values.” Although some reviewers considered Wolfe's characterizations in The Bonfire of the Vanities superficial, many praised his incisive examination of New York's criminal justice system and the city's turbulent social and ethnic divisions. A Man in Full was met with generally favorable reviews. Some complained of the book's length and Wolfe's tendency to indulge in cultural stereotypes, with several major critics voicing disappointment, such as John Updike who called the novel “entertainment, not literature.” Despite the critical contention that Wolfe's exuberant prose style and his use of fictional devices distort or overwhelm the events he reports, many agree with Joe David Bellamy's assessment that Wolfe is “the most astute and popular social observer and cultural chronicler of his generation. … No other writer of our time has aspired to capture the fabled Spirit of the Age so fully and has succeeded so well.

Frederick Neitzsche

Throughout his notes and published works, Nietzsche establishes relations between his own reflection and the dominant intellectual currents of his own day. A partial list of what was then fashionable would necessarily include: Darwinism, idealism, irrationalism, vitalism, Marxism, socialism and positivism. Although his mind seethed like a Romantic he remained opposed to Romantic idealism and spiritualism. In an oft-quoted phrase, what Nietzsche sought was "the revaluation of all values."

Nietzsche does not belong to any well-defined movement. His mind and method of reflection defines his position as solitary, profound, unique and at times, pessimistic. But, he does use his knowledge of intellectual movements and currents as dialectical elements for the forging of his own thought. Enigmatic as he was, Nietzsche belongs both to his own time at the same time that he rises beyond it. If anything, what he offered was a fresh, reflective, psychological, and poetic perspective. The only way his thought can really be studied is by going to the source, by going to his principal published works. It is for this reason that while I was reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra several years ago, I abandoned reading any published commentaries or critiques of Nietzsche. Perhaps it is better to see the film on my own then be guided by some misguided critic who has his own agenda to press upon me, a critic who perhaps possesses but no longer seeks.

>Information Taken From Various Sources