Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 14

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The Popular Culture Review

example, Susan Stern's association with the Weathermen in the
1960's not merely out of personal conviction but because its leaders,
Mark Rudd and Bemadine Dohm, were media celebrities, as Stem
herself was to become later, during the trial of the Seattle 7 (23).
Sherman McCoy does something very similar when the media
sensationalism surrounding his arrest makes him the toast of the
Fifth Avenue "beehive," when the rich and socially prominent
people who used to ignore him now sit around in silence "begging for
war stories" (583), which he happily provides, replete with
requisite exaggerations of what happened to him in jail. And yet this
little narcissistic episode, placed within the context of the profound
internal changes he has undergone, is little more than a momentary
lapse into old habits, a temporary exercise in wish fulfillment. In
actuality, the media attention he receives serves only to kill the old
Sherman McCoy.
The "dying" process itself begins in the days prior to his
arrest. That event prompts Sherman to look anew at the world, to
regard the world not from the p>erspective of a Master of the Universe
but rather as a slave to large, almost incomprehensible forces.
"Never in his life had he seen things, the things of everyday life,
more clearly," Wolfe writes. "And his eyes poisoned every one of
themi . . . Everybody smiled at him. Kind respectful unsuspecting
souls. . . Today still Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr. McCoy Mr.
McCoy . . . How very sad to think that in this solid orderly place . . .
tomorrow. .