Nostalgie de la boue is a nineteenth-century French term that means, literally, “nostalgia for the mud.” Within New York Society nostalgie de la boue was a great motif throughout the 1960’s, from the moment two socialites, Susan Stein and Christina Paolozzi, discovered the Peppermint Lounge and the twist and two of the era’s first pet primitives, Joey Dee and Killer Joe Piro. Nostalgie de la boue tends to be a favorite motif whenever a great many new faces and a lot of new money enter Society. New arrivals have always had two ways of certifying their superiority over the hated “middle class.” They can take on the trappings of aristocracy, such as grand architecture, servants, parterre boxes, and high protocol; and they can indulge in the gauche thrill of taking on certain styles of the lower orders. The two are by no means mutually exclusive; in fact, they are always used in combination. In England during the Regency period, nostalgie de la boue was very much the rage. London socialites during the Regency adopted the flamboyant capes and wild driving styles of the coach drivers, the “bruiser” fashions and hair styles of the bare-knuckle prize fighters, the see-through, jutting-nipple fashions of the tavern girls, as well as a reckless new dance, the waltz. Such affectations were meant to convey the arrogant self-confidence of the aristocrat as opposed to the middle-class striver’s obsession with propriety and keeping up appearances. During the 1960’s in New York nostalgie de la boue took the form of the vogue of rock music, the twist-frug genre of dances, Pop Art, Camp, the courting of pet primitives such as the Rolling Stones and José Torres, and innumerable dress fashions summed up in the recurrent image of the wealthy young man with his turtleneck jersey meeting his muttonchops at mid-jowl, à la the 1962 Sixth Avenue Automat bohemian, bidding good night to an aging doorman dressed in the mode of an 1870 Austrian army colonel.And nostalgie de la boue was very much the rage yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin: Radical Dogging: That Party at Zeus’s.
June 4, 2014
"In fact, this sort of nostalgie de la boue, or romanticizing of primitive souls, was one of the things that brought Radical Chic to the fore in New York Society."
Wrote Tom Wolfe in "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s" (1970):
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Meanwhile on the west coast, it was the scented government drones who never hiked more than a mile from pavement showing up at work with their Levis, flannel shirts, waffle stompers and blow-dried hair who eventually earned the sobriquet of "grunge". By the way, Crack, they were none of them black.
Are Meade's dogs are the primitive souls of Madison?
I can believe that. Zeus displays the arrogant self confidence of an aristocrat. The dogs are definitely good antidotes to middle-class striver's obsession with propriety, except for all that policing of poop.
O how they hated Wolfe for practicing sociology on them.
An air conditioned Tipi with a bugzapper and WiFi.
The good old days, barely affordable.
Patina expenses, and all.
Speaking of pet primitives you should look into the social career of mobster Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo who was sponsored in New York society by Jerry and Marta Orbach. It's said the Orbach's hosted a dinner party with Gallo as their special guest. After the dessert Gallo excused himself, drove to Jack Dempsey's Bar where he murdered two Columbo Family capos, and then returned to the Orbach's fashionable Central Park West pad in time for a nightcap.
This is one of Wolfe's pieces that read (30-40 years ago?) and just thought, "nailed it!" But then I read Charlotte Simmons. I thought that was a good book, and his eye caught some key things, but he missed a lot. It's like they say, when you read journalism about something you know a lot about they get it wrong, so you shouldn't believe journalists (and Wolfe is still a journalist) on things you don't know about. Needless to say, I didn't know Lenny in 1970 (or any other time.)
Trivia: What did Leonard Bernstein have in common with Charles Schulz, and almost had in common with Lyndon Johnson (no, it didn't involve throwing parties for Black Panthers)?
Answer: No chance at all to enjoy retirement. In 1990 Bernstein announced his retirement from conducting, and dropped dead a few days later. Schulz was an even more extreme case, dying the day after e he retired from drawing Peanuts.
Had LBJ run for re-election in 1968 and won, he would have died the day after his successor's inauguration.
Peter
I love Tom Wolfe. It takes a Southern gentleman to penetrate the façade of our faux-aristos.
I only met him once or twice but Jose Torres was in no way primitive. He was well read and had gracious manners. He was the light heavyweight champ when boxing was the most glamorous sport. He wanted to be a writer and achieved some measure of success in that field.
I suspect that by the end of the year Obama will be so loathed and despised, so mercilessly mocked for his willing complicity in dozens more gross scandals and episodes of homicidal ineptitude, that he will look back on this week with 'nostalgie de la Bowe', thinking fondly of when he still had an approval rate in double digits.
Wolf did not mention elsewhere the Bernstein's entertaining the Black Panthers?
http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/
This started, at least with a vengeance, with Rousseau, as surely everyone with a classical education is aware. A classmate at seminary in NYC at the time said "Whites want to shake their asses like blacks." He was a serial philanderer. Went into banking.
Many of the rich urban elites feel secure enough within the neighborhoods they live in to engage in the celebration of radicalism and street theater, safe in the knowledge they have the money to shield their houses or apartments off from the negative aspects of those behaviors, along with never having to deal with the hoi-palloi in a setting like mass transit that strips the perks away from the wealthy at least until the trip's over.
The New York liberals Wolfe profiled are still around, albeit many as part of a new generation that lamented the tidiness and order of the city over the past two decades, and longed for a return to the edginess of the mid-1960s through early 90s (though there may be fewer on Park Avenue now than on Central Park West, where the high-income voters went for Bill de Blasio last November, while their East Side counterparts voted for Republican Joe Lhota).
ironrailsironweights:
Perhaps you are just using the accepted phrase, " to enjoy retirement," but Charles Schulz did not retire in order to enjoy being retired; he retired because he knew he was about to die. He lived to draw his strip, but he literally could not go on, and so he stopped.
I well remember the heyday of Radical Chic, when the "liberal" (and by "liberal" I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State-fellators") upper-class joined forces with the ghetto lumpenproletariat to gang up on the Middle Class. "Bourgeois" was about as severe a put-down term as one could find back then. Now the Hive is all "Lo, the Poor Middle Class." When, I wonder, did the Party Line change?
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