The Pump House Gang - Tom Wolfe Takes a Look at 1960's Social Climbers

In the late 1960’s, an article appeared in New York magazine, about Dr. Edward T. Hall. An anthropologist, Dr. Hall was working on a premise that much the same as certain animal species, human beings have an instinctive need for personal space. Using New York City as his laboratory, Dr. Hall had a theory that overcrowding had “thrown New York into a state of behavioral sink.” And while this subject could have made for some very droll reading, nothing was further from the truth; Tom Wolfe wrote the article in question, and his Technicolor prose made for a fascinating, fun-to-read piece of Journalism.

At the time, Wolfe (The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) was writing for New York as well as London’s Weekend Telegraph. His 1968 book, The Pump House Gang is a collection of articles that appeared in either publication. Due to Wolfe’s colorful style, these 40-year old writings are still vibrant and yes, interesting. In Wolfe’s world, a man never merely sat down to breakfast, rather, he “stroked out at the breakfast table with his head apoplexed like a cauliflower out of his $6.95 semi-spread Pima-cotton shirt…”

The Pump House Gang utilizes several true-life tales to examine that most oppressive of human natures-class. Social hierarchies. Social hierarchies and class struggles, that existed, often within the same basic types of people. In The Life and Hard Times of a Teenage London Society Girl, Wolfe discovered a rivalry between two groups of British debs. There were the Heathfields – boarding school girls, you know, the upper class elite, the girls from “good” families; and the Dollies - gasp! middle class girls with careers. Both factions attended the same parties and frequented the same social circles, yet both groups saw themselves as superior. For instance, if anything has ever mattered to teen girls, fashion matters and fashion is everything, and Wolfe witnessed a rather large chasm between the two: “The Dollies get involved in fashion, so they know how to look. One can always tell a Heathfield. They try the mod thing, but they are always too…matched up.”

Well, “who cares,” you might ask, “other than former Dollies and Heathfields?” Well, Wolfe actually found this sort of thing – this societal rivalry – fascinating. And he easily turned it into worthwhile reading with his enthusiastic method of writing.

And it wasn’t only London teenage debutantes that caught Wolfe’s attention. In The King of the Status Dropouts, Wolfe profiled that dashing, then-young man, that suave fellow living out practically every man’s fantasy, Hugh Hefner, founder of the Playboy empire. At the time, Hef – I can call him Hef, can’t I? – Hef was grossing $48-million a year. And yet, “Hugh Hefner is not “best people,” however. By the old status standards he still doesn’t rank, and he seems to sense it.” So Hef – I can call him Hef, can’t I? – Hef, unable to break into the social elite, made up his own rules, his own “class,” his own “status.” And by god, just who wouldn’t have wanted to stay home all day long, lying in a revolving bed, lounging in expensive pajamas or bathrobes? Who wouldn’t have wanted to work/eat/sleep whenever one felt like it, with a full staff available 24/7, catering to ones every whim? Who wouldn’t have wanted access to naked women as part of one’s job? Ahhh, the life of Hugh Hefner, Status Dropout. Again, Wolfe was fascinated, and again, he wrote an article worth reading, even 40 years later.

And that is the key to The Pump House Gang. Tom Wolfe found certain subjects worthy of ink – Natalie Wood at an art gallery isn’t exactly going to grab everyone’s fancy – yet Wolfe turned such stories into wonderfully interesting, relevant reading. Personally, these decades-old articles are infinitely more fun to read than the latest rant passed off as “Journalism.” Hopefully, you’ll find it so as well.