Tom Wolfe, radical chic and that party at Lenny Bernstein’s

I could not have rediscovered my love affair with Tom Wolfe at a more fortuitous time. It all started while on a long weekend away with my fiancée in Dublin, celebrating a “landmark” birthday. The hotel we were staying in was beautiful. A four-star Georgian townhouse just a mile from the city centre. Conventional wisdom dictates that convenience costs. It was a rather extortionate affair — as I was to find out later: €700 for two nights on the Emerald Isle.

Once we checked in, I dropped my bags on the bed and promptly left to check out the local area. No more than ten strides from our accommodation I discovered a bookshop selling rare books. The shop was small and that familiar yet welcoming smell of old books filled my lungs. Many great works of literature adorned the dust-strewn shelves. My attention turned to a first edition of William Burroughs’ The Wild Boys. But at €150, not even I could justify that. Then I saw the words “Tom Wolfe”. It was a first edition of Bonfire of the Vanities. At €60 it fell within my already depleting budget. I handed my money to the shopkeeper, bid him good day and I was off.

I had devoured almost all of the 656 pages before the ferry had arrived back in Holyhead. The joy of reading the novel led me to dust off an old favourite: Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. The volume collects two short pieces of prose. It’s no doubt testimony to the porosity of my memory that I remembered next to nothing of the book. But as soon as I started reading These Radical Chic Evenings, everything came flooding back.

Originally entitled Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s, it first appeared as a feature-length essay in a 1970 edition of New York magazine. The essay chronicles in great detail a fundraising event held by the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein for the Black Panther Party. The event was to raise money for “Panther 21” — a group of 21 Black Panthers who had been arrested and charged with numerous offences including bombing a plethora of New York police precincts. The 21 had been jailed and each faced a $100,000 bail to be released.

The essay is an incisive indictment of New York high society. It satirises how courting revolutionary activists clashes with the social mores of America’s celebrity class. It is a beautiful commentary on social class and the collision of disparate cultures. Now 50 years old, the 25,000 word essay must surely count as a founding work of modern social satire.

Wolfe coined the term “radical chic” to describe how wealthy liberals attempted to ingratiate themselves within the progressive politics of the time. In this case it was the world of the Black Panther Party. Rich progressives immerse themselves in social issues and revolutionary politics. This, Wolfe says, is how they attain the coveted “radical chic”.

The party hosted around 90 of New York’s most affluent and well-known personalities. Celebrities such as Barbara Walters, socialite Cynthia Phipps and intellectual Harold Taylor all packed out Bernstein’s Park Avenue apartment. “Pure gold for any writer”, as Wolfe would later remark.

A potential cultural clash first appears in the essay when questions surface over whether or not the appropriate appetisers have been served. Roquefort hors d’oeuvres rolled in nuts and meatballs petites au Coq Hardi. The guests wonder if the panthers would like them – offered on “gadrooned silver platters” by maids in hand-ironed black uniforms, while butlers circulate Bernstein’s 13-room penthouse serving drinks.

“But it’s all right. They’re white servants,” we are told. A matter of utmost importance to the radically chic was racial sensitivity. Wolfe explains how all effort was made to expunge black servants from Bernstein’s “million-dollar chatchka look” penthouse: “Obviously you can’t have a Negro butler and maid,” he writes, as he sarcastically congratulates Lenny for being a genius. (In 1970, “Negro” was still just about acceptable.) With so much emphasis placed on race, this passage is redolent of the hypocritical, virtue-signalling sect of today. Wolfe states that “Radical Chic has touched off the most desperate search for white servants.” This irony is lost on the chic – not realising that they were racially discriminating against black people in a city where the black unemployment rate at the time was 5.4 per cent.

There’s even a whole paragraph dedicated to documenting a phone call he overhears by a guest that beautifully sums up the racial anxiety she feels. Two non-white friends had agreed to be servants at a party she was planning to host. The tension becomes too much. “I’m going to be a maid myself!” she exclaims. If you truly believe in equality – Wolfe asks somewhat rhetorically – why the need for servants at all?

Contrary to popular belief, Wolfe did not actually crash Lenny’s party. He swiped the invitation card from the desk of David Halberstam, a writer at Harper’s magazine. The card read “Invite to Bernstein’s at 895 Park Avenue, corner of Park and 79th Street.” Wolfe simply called the number given to RSVP and said: “This is Tom Wolfe, and I accept.”

As the panthers arrive, Wolfe, writing in shorthand, astutely describes their attire. Dressed in tight pants, black turtlenecks, leather coats, Cuban shades and sporting “funk…wild” Afros, they strike him as an intriguing presence. A guest remarks: “I’ve never met a panther before!” One of the panthers, we are told, had been arrested just two days earlier on alleged gun charges. He was now out on bail walking around Leonard’s “Chinese yellow” coloured apartment. It’s the fascination with these revolutionaries that captivates the chic. The perfect outlaw who “runs through Lenny’s duplex like a rogue hormone.”

Needless to say, the fundraiser brought in a lot of money: some $10,000 (perhaps $70,000 today) was raised.

It’s easy to see how this can be juxtaposed alongside today’s “woke” celebrities. We can all learn a lot from Wolfe’s description of that party. You could easily picture A-list celebrities gathering at Harry and Meghan’s $14 million mansion. The recently-hired white butler opening the door to let the Black Lives Matter activists in. The ritualised self-abasement as they all drop to one knee, some may even raise their fist – Malcom X style. “Will they like the caviar?” “Should we help them defund the police? I mean, it’s not like we have a problem with crime in this neighbourhood, with our high walls and armed security!” The hypocrisy of radical chic was first brought to light in Wolfe’s work.

“Virtue signalling” is a relatively recent phrase used to denounce the hypocrisy and stupidity of today’s progressive activists. “Limousine liberal” is slightly older. But radical chic is the oldest — and also the most accurate.

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