The Pump House Gang
by Tom Wolfe · first published 1966
4mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2016–2025first – last mentioned
100% recommend
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I would have you read ‘The Pump House Gang’ by Tom Wolfe and realize that there is limited room at the top of the wealth status hierarchy. It is not realistic that you will get there. But the people in that book all found a community that they…
on “Does it ever get discouraging” ↗…opponent in the 1952 election was the opposite type. Anyhow I'm sure that you've seen many of my favorite sources on this but I'll point out both C. Wright Mills The Power Elite and the Tom Wolfe books The Pump House Gang and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Mills defies the reductivism of 2025 in that he says there is not just one power elite but multiple power elites and just analyzes those in a great…
on “Testosterone in young men may shape generosity, self-worth” ↗I love Tom Wolfe; I’d not connected his out-of-vougeness to the recent preference for ‘truthiness’ in reporting the reviewer identifies. I remember reading him at ~13 - my dad gave me a copy of ‘The Pump House Gang’, and told me something to the effect of: “try to write like this - don’t ever try to sound like this.” We live in Didion times - clean lines and clean sentences - and though maximalism on the page (or…
on “Who's Afraid of Tom Wolfe?” ↗Social class is astonishingly multidimensional as pointed out in the works of C. Wright Mills (Power Elite), Paul Fussel (Class), Tom Wolfe (The Pump House Gang), etc. In my extended family there are no college professors, but a lot of cops, even a lot of women that are cops. (There are some accountants, but they are forensic accountants ;-) When I get…
on “Classism in America” ↗