‘Freaking Out in Los Angeles，’ by Tom Wolfe

It’s a little difficult to convey the anxious reverie that the word “California” invoked in New Yorkers at mid-century. It was still literally the Golden State, a place of sunlight and cheap houses near the beach and easy money and gentle freakiness, but also (the commonplace attitude held) a place Without Culture that might break off andtumble into the seabefore long. “A wet dream in the mind of New York,” Erica Jong once said, and presumably after you experienced it, it was time to wake up and face reality.

Tom Wolfe enjoyed nothing so much as pricking the self-satisfaction of the Northeastern elite, which in the 1960s was much more central to the nation’s prevailing attitudes (and everything else) then than now. He also, judging by his writing, appreciated the loosey-gooseyness of California attitudes, perhaps because he saw in them honest expression, perhaps because they were simply fun to gawp at and write about. His reporting trips out West produced several of his greatest journalistic works: profiles of the car customizers of Los Angelesthat gave his first book its title,the hippies aboard a bus calledFurthur,the La Jolla surfers.

As well as this minor charmer,“Freaking Out in Los Angeles,”published in our August 26, 1968, issue. It’s not aboutanything,exactly; it’s a drift around Los Angeles, soaking up the local culture at that moment (turns out there was one, just not the Metropolitan Opera House–Ivy League–Century Club kind). He casts an arched eyebrow toward see-through dresses concocted from mesh laundry bags, but he sees what turns out to be a preview of boomer cultural hegemony: “Something about these girls makes you realize they are more than freaks. They have …certitude. They know they are years ahead and that the world will follow.” He drops by a Black radical play calledBig Time Buck White,and is impressed with its wit and dialogue. (The next fall, it was adapted into a musical and opened onBroadway, starring of all people Muhammad Ali.It drew immense advance buzzbut fell apart and closed after four days.) Wolfe’s story is less a tight story of a person or subject and more of a diary—a little likeThe New Yorker’s old “Letter From…” dispatches, sent back from Europe during wartime to give a taste of occupied Paris or embattled London through the unique voice of one observer. On the cover ofNew York,it was played as such, which is to say vague but totally readable: “Tom Wolfe Reports on the New Life Out There.”