The Ankler has a sharp piece on the new movie about Leonard Bernstein. The author focuses on an important aspect of Bernstein’s later life, the cocktail party with the Black Panthers.
Tom Wolfe’s account of the party became an epic for good reasons. Wolfe wasn’t quite new; Sinclair Lewis wrote a similar fictional party in Babbitt, though Lewis was punching down while Wolfe was punching up. Babbitt, a smalltown businessman, hosted 1920s bohemian types in an attempt to pick up some coolness from them. Bernstein, the ultimate urban aristocrat, hosted 1970s hippie types in order to shine his own radiant coolness on them.
The Ankler piece hits a beautifully resonant chord by quoting MICHAEL Lewis, who is the new SINCLAIR Lewis. Both are assholes who deify the demons and smash the bourgeoisie. MICHAEL Lewis, who also deified Demon Fauci and Demon Bankman-Fried, made a movie about Wolfe.
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In the doc, Wolfe himself explains how he crashed the party. Spotting an invitation on the desk of fellow journalist David Halberstam, he simply jotted down the RSVP number and responded in his own name. As for the fall-out, he insists, it was not his job as a writer to worry about what effects his words would have.
But Lewis himself raises the question “whether he crossed the line in that story into, you know, cruelty.” And the doc offers up a couple of possible answers.
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In the demon-sucking minds of SINCLAIR Lewis and MICHAEL Lewis, punching up is cruelty to the demons who pay the Lewises. Punching down is kindness to the demons who pay the Lewises.
Polistra's Mill 