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The Great Relearning

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The Great Relearning THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 20, NO. 12 / DECEMBER 1987 Tom Wolfe THE GREAT RELEARNING The twentieth century is over. n 1968, in San Francisco, I came cedented start from zero—seems to me design man could free himself from the Relearning on the wing, the architects I across a curious footnote to the psy- to be the leitmotif of our current inter- dead hand of the past. By the late are off on a binge of eclecticism com- chedelic movement. At the Haight- lude, here in the dying years of the 1970s, however, architects themselves parable to the Victorian period's a cen- Ashbury Free Clinic there were doctors twentieth century. were beginning to complain of the dead tury ago. who were treating diseases no living hand of the Bauhaus: the flat roofs, In politics the twentieth century's doctor had ever encountered before, which leaked from rain and collapsed great start from zero was one-party diseases that had disappeared so long "QJ tart from zero" was the slogan of from snow, the tiny bare beige office socialism, also known as Communism ago they had never even picked up O the Bauhaus School. The story of cubicles, which made workers feel like or Marxism-Leninism. Given that sys- Latin names, diseases such as the how the Bauhaus, a tiny artists' move- component parts, the glass walls, which tem's bad reputation in the West today mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, ment in Germany in the 1920s, swept let in too much heat, too much cold, (even among the French intelligentsia), the thrush, the scroff, the rot. And how aside the architectural styles of the past too much glare, and no air at all. The it is instructive to read John Reed's Ten was it that they had now returned? It and created the glass-box face of the relearning is now underway in earnest. Days That Shook the World—before had to do with the fact that thousands modern American city is a familiar The architects are busy rummaging turning to Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Ar- of young men and women had mi- one, and I won't retell it. But I should about in what the artist Richard chipelago. The old strike hall poster of grated to San Francisco to live com- mention the soaring spiritual exuber- Merkin calls the Big Closet. Inside the a Promethean worker in a blue shirt munally in what I think history will ance with which the movement began, Big Closet, in promiscuous heaps, are breaking his chains across his mighty record as one of the most extraordinary the passionate conviction of the Bau- the abandoned styles of the past. The chest was in truth the vision of ultimate religious experiments of all time. haus's leader, Walter Gropius, that by current favorite rediscoveries: Classical, human freedom the movement believed The hippies, as they became known, starting from zero in architecture and Secession, and Moderne (Art Deco). in at the outset. For intellectuals in the sought nothing less than to sweep aside West the painful dawn began with the all codes and restraints of the past and publication of the Gulag Archipelago start out from zero. At one point Ken in 1973. Solzhenitsyn insisted that the Kesey organized a pilgrimage to Stone- villain behind the Soviet concentration- henge with the idea of returning to camp network was not Stalin or Lenin Anglo-Saxon civilization's point zero, (who invented the term concentration which he figured was Stonehenge, and camp) or even Marxism. It was instead heading out all over again to do it bet- the Soviets' peculiarly twentieth- ter. Among the codes and restraints century notion that they could sweep that people in the communes swept aside not only the old social order but aside—quite purposely—were those also its religious ethic, which had been that said you shouldn't use other peo- millennia in the making ("common ple's toothbrushes or sleep on other decency," Orwell called it) and re- people's mattresses without changing invent morality . here . now . the sheets or, as was more likely, with- "at the point of a gun," in the famous out using any sheets at all or that you phrase of the Maoists. Today the re- and five other people shouldn't drink learning has reached the point where from the same bottle of Shasta or take even ruling circles in the Soviet Union tokes from the same cigarette. And and China have begun to wonder how now, in 1968, they were relearning . best to convert Communism into some- the laws of hygiene ... by getting the thing other than, in Susan Sontag's mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, phrase, Successful Fascism. the thrush, the scroff, the rot. The great American contribution to This process, namely the relearning the twentieth century's start from zero —following a Promethean and unpre- was in the area of manners and mores, especially in what was rather primly Tom Wolfe is author of The Right called "the sexual revolution." In every Stuff, From Bauhaus to Our House, hamlet, even in the erstwhile Bible Belt, and, most recently, The Bonfire of the may be found the village brothel, no Vanities (Farrar Straus Giroux). longer hidden in a house of blue lights 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED or red lights or behind a green door but mosphere. People of the next century, destroy the planet itself—but also the back in awe . without the slightest openly advertised by the side of the snug in their Neo-Georgian apartment capacity to escape to the stars on space temptation to emulate the daring of road with a thousand-watt back-lit complexes, will gaze back with a ghast- ships if it blew. But above all they will those who swept aside all rules and plastic sign: TOTALLY ALL-NUDE GIRL ly awe upon our time. They will regard look back upon the twentieth as the tried to start from zero. Instead, they SAUNA MASSAGE AND MARATHON EN- the twentieth as the century in which century in which their forebears had will sink ever deeper into their Neo- COUNTER SESSIONS INSIDE. Up until wars became so enormous they were the amazing confidence, the Promethe- Louis bergeres, content to live in what two years ago pornographic movie known as World Wars, the century in an hubris, to defy the gods and try to will be known as the Somnolent Cen- theaters were as ubiquitous as the which technology leapt forward so push man's power and freedom to lim- tury or the Twentieth Century's Hang- Seven-Eleven, including outdoor drive- rapidly man developed the capacity to itless, god-like extremes. They will look over. • ins with screens six, seven, eight storeys high, the better to beam all the moist- ened folds and glistening nodes and stiffened giblets to a panting American countryside. Two years ago the porno- graphic theater began to be replaced by the pornographic videocassette, which The non-issue in Alaska could be brought into any home. Up on the shelf in the den, next to the set Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) a peak rate of about 1.5 million barrels a day— of The Encyclopedia Brittanica and the has in recent months been much shrouded in about a fifth of U.S. production—but will soon great books, one now finds the cas- controversy. Much of this controversy has cen- enter its inevitable period of decline. The real settes: Shanks Akimbo, That Thing tered on whether a relatively small portion of issue in Alaska is whether or not America should with the Cup. My favorite moment in these lands—1.5 million acres along the Beaufort maximize its economic domestic oil and gas Jessica Hahn's triumphal tour of Me- Sea Coastal Plain, out of a total of 19 million production to reduce the nation's dependence on dialand this fall came when a ten-year- acres—should be opened to oil exploration. foreign oil and its negative balance of pay- old girl, a student at a private school, One of the latest salvos fired by the anti- ments—and do so in an environmentally accept- wearing a buttercup blouse, a cardigan development forces came in the form of a letter to able manner. an influential newspaper by a spokesman for an What about the environment? Would it truly sweater, and her school uniform skirt, environmental group. The letter makes a couple be despoiled, as the environmentalists state, if approached her outside a television of statements worthy of examination. drilling were to take place? studio with a stack of Playboy First, the writer states that there is "only a 19 A major issue environmentalists raise con- magazines featuring the famous Hahn percent chance of finding any oil at all in the Arctic cerns Alaskan wildlife. Of all the animal species in nude form and asked her to autograph refuge." But even at those odds—and taking risks the area, Secretary Hodel cited the caribou as the them. With the school's blessing, she is what the oil business is all about—the coastal most likely to be affected. But Senator Frank H. intended to take the signed copies back plain represents the best hope for a major on- Murkowski of Alaska has pointed out that the to the campus and hold a public auc- shore oil strike in the United States. In fact, within caribou herd has, in fact, quadrupled at Prudhoe tion. The proceeds would go to the the context of risks the oil industry usually faces Bay during the oil development years, and since poor.
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