Art: Lost in Culture Gulch

Over the past ten years, Tom Wolfe has set himself up as the Bugs Bunny of American journalism—a squeaky, impudent dandy with a glib eye for the lumbering victim. Toward the end of the '60s, New York appeared to be strewn with his targets, from rich Black Panther-loving liberals to the editorial staff of The New Yorker. It was also dotted with the lucky recipients of his approval: mayflies like Baby Jane Holzer, cultish ephemerids like Marshall McLuhan and social grotesques like the collector-exhibitionists Robert and Ethel Scull, all festooned in yards of...