The Luck of James Wolcott

I took a "well day" off yesterday and spent a good part of my stolen free time devouring James Wolcott's book, "Lucking Out", which came out in paperback this week. The deeper I got into his recounting of the time he spent working for the Village Voice in the 70's, hanging out with Pauline Kael, and patronizing CBGB's, where he witnessed the birth of The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads and Patti Smith, among other vanguard groups and personalities of the time, the more I found my own memories of that time coming back in ever-sharpening focus. It was a wonderful recollection, long pushed to the back of my mind, but oh so pleasureable to recall and re-live. That music, those movies, those books that filled our lives during the 70's and early 80's! Wolcott brings them back to life, and in doing so reminds us it was all so good, so alive, and not all fraught with merely disco posturing, as some would have you believe.

On the strength of a recommendation letter from Norman Mailer, written to Dan Wolf, then the managing editor of the Voice, Wolcott found himself propelled into a life, a time, and a career path that had more of everything than a college dropout from Frostburg College could ever have imagined for himself. Dirt poor, moving from one crappy studio sublet to another, and after being relieved of his original "desk duties" Wolcott eventually found himself in the position of regularly contributing to the Voice, Creem, Esquire, The New York Review of Books, and other leading publications of the day. He discovered the wonders of the New York ballet scene, and participated in post-mortem film critiques at the famed Algonquin with the various "Paulettes"  who always accompanied Ms. Kael.

The book goes a long way in describing the cultural scene and zeitgeist of the 70's in New York, the momentum of which eventually and inevitably spilled westward, allowing me to see what Wolcott experienced, albeit in the marginally less grimy college town of Columbus, Ohio. Patti, The Heads, et al, eventually found their way to our neighborhood, and reading Wolcott's description of their performances, I was transported back to a time of high energy and high expectations. Music was being reinvented right before our pogo-ing, bobbing heads and eyes.

 On the night of December 10, 1980 Wolcott and Kael share a taxi ride downtown, and learn of the death of John Lennon earlier in the evening. It is in that cab where the book ends, and in 1997, when Wolcott writes a piece called "Waiting For Godard", containing criticism of his fellow "Paulettes", citing somewhat unkindly their lack of originality and slavish devotion to Kael, their friendship ends. It was also in the 90's when Wolcott would leave his post at the New Yorker, opting instead to take a place within the newly re-imagined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor, a position he holds to this day.