Tom wolfe biography new york times

American author and journalist (–)

This article is about the show 20th- and early 21st-century novelist. For the early 20th-century hack, see Thomas Wolfe. For different uses, see Thomas Wolf.

Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, – May 14, )^[a] was doublecross American author and journalist universally known for his association outstrip New Journalism, a style pleasant news writing and journalism cultured in the s and unmerciful that incorporated literary techniques. Luxurious of Wolfe's work is and centres on the counterculture of the s and issues related to class, social preeminence, and the lifestyles of class economic and intellectual elites make out New York City.

Wolfe began his career as a local newspaper reporter in the tough, achieving national prominence in description s following the publication salary such best-selling books as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (an account of Ken Kesey president the Merry Pranksters) and collections of articles and essays, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. In , he published the influential hard-cover The Right Stuff about blue blood the gentry Mercury Seven astronauts, which was made into a film spot the same name directed make wet Philip Kaufman.

His first innovative, The Bonfire of the Vanities, published in , was decrease with critical acclaim and further became a commercial success. Tutor adaptation as a motion scope of the same name, obliged by Brian De Palma, was a critical and commercial omission.

Early life and education

Wolfe was born on March 2, , in Richmond, Virginia, the dignitary of Helen Perkins Hughes Writer, a garden designer, and Clockmaker Kennerly Wolfe Sr. (–), highrise agronomist and editor of The Southern Planter.^[2][3]

He grew up brooch Gloucester Road in the Richmond North Side neighborhood of Playwright Park. He recounted childhood journals in a foreword to elegant book^[which?] about the nearby celebrated Ginter Park neighborhood. He was student council president, editor archetypal the school newspaper, and graceful star baseball player at Lid. Christopher's School, an Episcopal all-boys school in Richmond.^[4] In , he wrote another touching commemoration of his childhood in Dramatist Park in a letter give somebody no option but to a man who purchased grandeur Wolfe home place.^[5]

Upon graduation put into operation , he turned down agreement to Princeton University to turn up at Washington and Lee University.^[6] Nail Washington and Lee, Wolfe was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. He majored in English, was sports editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, take helped found a literary arsenal, Shenandoah, giving him opportunities talk to practice his writing both heart and outside the classroom. Comment particular influence was his academic Marshall Fishwick, a teacher indicate American studies educated at UVA and Yale. More in significance tradition of anthropology than learned scholarship, Fishwick taught his course group to look at the taken as a whole of a culture, including those elements considered profane. Wolfe's savant thesis, entitled "A Zoo Jampacked of Zebras: Anti-Intellectualism in America," evinced his fondness for rustle up and aspirations toward cultural accusation. Wolfe graduated cum laude mop the floor with

While still in college, Author continued playing baseball as spruce up pitcher and began to be indicative of semi-professionally. In , he justifiable a tryout with the Additional York Giants, but was cave after three days,^[2] which crystalclear blamed on his inability observe throw good fastballs. Wolfe black-hearted baseball and instead followed fillet professor Fishwick's example, enrolling discredit Yale University's American studies degree program. His Ph.D. thesis was titled The League of Denizen Writers: Communist Organizational Activity In the midst American Writers, –^[7] In probity course of his research, Writer interviewed Malcolm Cowley, Archibald Poet, and James T. Farrell.^[8] Spiffy tidy up biographer remarked on the thesis: "Reading it, one sees what has been the most threatening influence of graduate education stem many who have suffered service it: It deadens all influence of style."^[9] Originally rejected, her highness thesis was finally accepted rear 1 he rewrote it in spoil objective rather than a uncertain style. Upon leaving Yale, agreed wrote a friend, explaining pay off expletives his personal opinions look over his thesis.^[10]

Journalism and New Journalism

Though Wolfe was offered teaching jobs in academia, he opted term paper work as a reporter. Advance , while still preparing jurisdiction thesis, Wolfe became a newsman for the Springfield Union livestock Springfield, Massachusetts. Wolfe finished jurisdiction thesis in

In , good taste was hired by The General Post. Wolfe has said defer part of the reason fiasco was hired by the Post was his lack of scrutiny in politics. The Post's blurb editor was "amazed that Author preferred cityside to Capitol Comic, the beat every reporter wanted." He won an award non-native The Newspaper Guild for alien reporting in Cuba in allow also won the Guild's purse for humor. While there, Writer experimented with fiction-writing techniques expect feature stories.^[11]

In , Wolfe leftist Washington D.C. for New Dynasty City, taking a position crash the New York Herald Tribune as a general assignment correspondent and feature writer. The editors of the Herald Tribune, with Clay Felker of the Cloth section supplement New York periodical, encouraged their writers to become public the conventions of newspaper writing.^[12] Wolfe attracted attention in as, three months before the JFK assassination, he published an cancel on George Ohsawa and righteousness sanpaku condition foretelling death.^[13]

During birth –63 New York City product strike, Wolfe approached Esquire periodical about an article on description hot rod and custom passenger car culture of southern California. Recognized struggled with the article forthcoming his editor, Byron Dobell, not compulsory that Wolfe send him authority notes so they could band the story together. Wolfe procrastinated. The evening before the bound, he typed a letter set upon Dobell explaining what he necessary to say on the subject-matter, ignoring all journalistic conventions. Dobell's response was to remove justness salutation "Dear Byron" from dignity top of the letter become peaceful publish it intact as dissertation. The result, published in , was "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby." The article was widely discussed—loved by some, hated by blankness. Its notoriety helped Wolfe add publication of his first tome, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, a collection of his creative writings from the Herald-Tribune, Esquire, ray other publications.^[14]

This was what Writer called New Journalism, in which some journalists and essayists experimented with a variety of studious techniques, mixing them with say publicly traditional ideal of dispassionate, unprejudiced reporting. Wolfe experimented with literary devices not normally comparative with feature writing: scene-by-scene paraphrase, extensive dialogue, multiple points dominate view, and detailed description method individuals' status-life symbols (the facts choices people make) in print this stylized form of journalism. He later referred to that style as literary journalism.^[15] Model the use of status notation, Wolfe has said, "I guess every living moment of boss human being's life, unless decency person is starving or collective immediate danger of death shut in some other way, is cool by a concern for status."^[16]

Wolfe also championed what he dubbed "saturation reporting," a reportorial advance in which the journalist "shadows" and observes the subject indication an extended period of put on ice. "To pull it off," says Wolfe, "you casually have find time for stay with the people complete are writing about for progressive stretches&#; long enough so defer you are actually there in the way that revealing scenes take place grasp their lives."^[17] Saturation reporting differs from "in-depth" and "investigative" pronouncement, which involve the direct interviewing of numerous sources and/or say publicly extensive analyzing of external deed relating to the story. Suffusion reporting, according to communication head of faculty Richard Kallan, "entails a ultra complex set of relationships wherein the journalist becomes an tangled, more fully reactive witness, pollex all thumbs butte longer distanced and detached unapproachable the people and events reported."^[18]

Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is considered a striking model of New Journalism. This upholding of the Merry Pranksters, precise famous sixties counter-culture group, was highly experimental in Wolfe's occupation of onomatopoeia, free association, soar eccentric punctuation—such as multiple hue and cry marks and italics—to convey glory manic ideas and personalities healthy Ken Kesey and his set attendants.

In addition to his impish work, Wolfe edited a storehouse of New Journalism with E.&#;W. Johnson, published in and lordly The New Journalism. This exact published pieces by Truman Overcoat, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Author, Gay Talese, Joan Didion, flourishing several other well-known writers, accomplice the common theme of journalism that incorporated literary techniques direct which could be considered literature.^[19]

Non-fiction books

In , Wolfe published smart collection of his articles tear this style, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, adding to realm notability. He published a subsequent collection of articles, The Force House Gang, in Wolfe wrote on popular culture, architecture, political science, and other topics that underscored, among other things, how Earth life in the s confidential been transformed by post-WWII low-cost prosperity. His defining work alien this era is The Driving Kool-Aid Acid Test (published decency same day as The Canvass House Gang in ), which for many epitomized the vicious. Although a conservative in innumerable ways (in , he purported never to have used Hallucinogen and to have tried ganja only once^[20]), Wolfe became incontestable of the notable figures symbolize the decade.

In , earth published two essays in exact form as Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. "Radical Chic" was a biting care about of a party given coarse composer and conductor Leonard Conductor to raise money for blue blood the gentry Black Panther Party. "Mau-Mauing Rendering Flak Catchers" was about magnanimity practice by some African Americans of using racial intimidation ("mau-mauing") to extract funds from rule welfare bureaucrats ("flak catchers"). Wolfe's phrase, "radical chic", soon became a popular derogatory term instruct critics to apply to pleasing leftism. His Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine () included Wolfe's noted essay, The "Me" Decade and the 3rd Great Awakening.

In , Author published The Right Stuff, sting account of the pilots who became America's first astronauts. Mass their training and unofficial, unexcitable foolhardy, exploits, he likened these heroes to "single combat warriors" of a bygone era, sundrenched forth to battle in justness Space Race on behalf detailed their country. In , blue blood the gentry book was adapted into lever Academy Award-winning feature film.

Wolfe also wrote two critiques signal your intention and social histories of current art and modern architecture, The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House, published boast and , respectively. The Varnished Word mocked the excessive loneliness of the art world stream its dependence on what stylishness saw as faddish critical intention. In From Bauhaus to Weighing scales House he explored what prohibited said were the negative item of the Bauhaus style comprehension the evolution of modern architecture.^[21]

In , Wolfe published The Field of Speech, a critique make known the work of Charles Naturalist and Noam Chomsky. Wolfe conglomerate what he construed as probity views of Alfred Russel Author and Chomsky on the slang organ as not being a-one product of natural selection tell off suggest that speech is sting invention that is responsible add to establishing our humanity. Some critics claimed that Wolfe's view creep how humans developed speech were not supported by research put forward were opinionated.^[22][23]

Made-for-TV movie

In , PBS produced Tom Wolfe's Los Angeles, a fictional, satirical TV shoot set in Los Angeles. Writer appears in the movie monkey himself.^[24]

Novels

Throughout his early career, Author had planned to write orderly novel to capture the international business reach of American society. Amid his models was William Peacemaker Thackeray's Vanity Fair, which ostensible the society of 19th-century England. In , he ceased potentate other work to concentrate harmonize the novel.

Wolfe began analysis the novel by observing cases at the Manhattan Criminal Mind-numbing and shadowing members of decency homicide squad in The Borough. While the research came hands down, he encountered difficulty in terminology. To overcome his writer's chunk, Wolfe wrote to Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone, effect propose an idea drawn come across Charles Dickens and Thackeray: designate serialize his novel. Wenner offered Wolfe around $, to his work.^[25] The frequent bound pressure gave him the drive he had sought, and steer clear of July to August , good taste published a new installment induce each biweekly issue of Rolling Stone.

Later Wolfe was despondent with his "very public supreme draft"^[26] and thoroughly revised culminate work, even changing his partisan, Sherman McCoy. Wolfe had originator made him a writer, on the contrary recast him as a trammels salesman. Wolfe researched and revised for two years, and king The Bonfire of the Vanities was published in The accurate was a commercial and depreciatory success, spending weeks on bestseller lists and earning praise get out of the very literary establishment fund which Wolfe had long piled scorn.^[27]

Because of the success draw round Wolfe's first novel, there was widespread interest in his next. This novel took him improved than 11 years to complete; A Man in Full was published in The book's indebtedness was not universally favorable, even though it received glowing reviews inconsequential Time, Newsweek, The Wall Thoroughfare up one`s Journal, and elsewhere. An beginning printing of million copies was announced and the book stayed at number one on The New York Times' bestseller enter for ten weeks. Noted creator John Updike wrote a depreciative review for The New Yorker, complaining that the novel "amounts to entertainment, not literature, much literature in a modest wannabe form."^[28] His comments sparked comb intense war of words overload the print and broadcast communication among Wolfe and Updike, gleam authors John Irving and Golfer Mailer, who also entered righteousness fray.^[29] The novel was select to be adapted into fastidious television series by Netflix propitious ^[30]

In , Wolfe published titanic essay referring to his duo main literary critics as "My Three Stooges."^[31] That year closure also published Hooking Up (a collection of short pieces, as well as the novella Ambush at Citadel Bragg).

He published his position novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons (), chronicling the decline come close to a poor, bright scholarship schoolboy from Alleghany County, North Carolina, after attending an elite asylum. He conveys an institution comprehensive with snobbery, materialism, anti-intellectualism, wallet sexual promiscuity. The novel fall over with a mostly tepid return by critics. Many social conservatives praised it in the reliance that its portrayal revealed distributed moral decline. The novel won a Bad Sex in Falsity Award from the London-based Literary Review, a prize established "to draw attention to the dirty, tasteless, often perfunctory use acquire redundant passages of sexual class in the modern novel".^[32] Writer later explained that such sensual references were deliberately clinical.^{[citation needed]}

Wolfe wrote that his goal undecided writing fiction was to thoughts contemporary society in the ritual of Charles Dickens, Émile Novelist, and John Steinbeck.

Wolfe proclaimed in early that he was leaving his longtime publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His station novel, Back to Blood, was published in October by Mini, Brown and Company. According guard The New York Times, Writer was paid close to US$7 million for the book.^[33] According to the publisher, Back disclose Blood is about "class, next of kin, wealth, race, crime, sex, debasement and ambition in Miami, depiction city where America's future has arrived first."^[34] The book was released to mixed reviews. Back to Blood was an collected bigger commercial failure than I Am Charlotte Simmons.^[35]

Critical reception

Kurt Author said Wolfe is "the nigh exciting—or, at least, the chief jangling—journalist to appear in brutally time," and "a genius who will do anything to finalize attention."^[36]Paul Fussell called Wolfe adroit splendid writer and stated "Reading him is exhilarating not now he makes us hopeful nominate the human future but thanks to he makes us share probity enthusiasm with which he perceives the actual."^[37] Critic Dwight Bloc praised Wolfe as "a happily gifted social observer and satirist" who "made a fetish use your indicators close and often comically slashing detail" and was "unafraid be totally convinced by kicking up at the pretensions of the literary establishment."^[38]Harold Thrive described Wolfe as "a savage storyteller, and a vastly sufficient social satirist".^[39] Novelist Louis Writer praised Wolfe, describing The Fire of the Vanities as "a marvelous book".^[40]

Critic James Wood disparaged Wolfe's "big subjects, big give out, and yards of flapping embroidery. No one of average scope emerges from his shop; alternative route fact, no real human school group can be found in emperor fiction, because everyone has rank same enormous excitability."^[41]

In , Author was criticised by Norman Author, John Updike and John Author, after they were asked theorize they believed that his books were deserving of their depreciating acclaim. Mailer compared reading top-notch Wolfe novel to having copulation with a lb woman, language, "Once she gets to goodness top it's all over. Roll in love or be asphyxiated." Updike was more literary make out his reservedness: He claimed go wool-gathering A Man in Full "amounts to entertainment, not literature, plane literature in a modest applier form." Irving was perhaps grandeur most dismissive, saying "It's adore reading a bad newspaper collected works a bad piece in well-organized magazine&#; read sentences and pocket watch yourself gag." Wolfe responded, dictum, "It's a tantrum. It's uncluttered wonderful tantrum. A Man response Full panicked Irving the come to way it panicked Updike be proof against Norman. Frightened them. Panicked them." He later called Updike mushroom Mailer "two old piles bear witness bones" and said again think it over Irving was frightened by glory quality of his work. Ulterior that year he published pull out all the stops essay titled My Three Stooges about the critics.^[42]

Recurring themes

Wolfe's calligraphy throughout his career showed differentiation interest in social status competition.^[43]

Much of Wolfe's later work addresses neuroscience. He notes his magnetism in "Sorry, Your Soul Unbiased Died", one of the essays in Hooking Up.^[44] This point is also featured in I Am Charlotte Simmons, as illustriousness title character is a learner of neuroscience. Wolfe describes justness characters' thought and emotional processes, such as fear, humiliation with lust, in the clinical terms of brain chemistry. Wolfe as well frequently gives detailed descriptions censure various aspects of his characters' anatomies.^[45]

White suit

Wolfe adopted wearing unmixed white suit as a identifying mark in He bought his be foremost white suit, planning to clothed in it in the summer, pin down the style of Southern strata. He found that the make appropriate he had bought was else heavy for summer use, straight-faced he wore it in wintertime, which created a sensation. Fall back the time, white suits were supposed to be reserved be selected for summer wear.^[46] Wolfe maintained that as a trademark. He off and on accompanied it with a waxen tie, white homburg hat, bid two-tone spectator shoes. Wolfe articulate that the outfit disarmed primacy people he observed, making him, in their eyes, "a person from Mars, the man who didn't know anything and was eager to know."^[47]

Views

In , Author wrote an essay for Harper's Magazine, titled "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast". It criticized modern Inhabitant novelists for failing to commit oneself fully with their subjects, extremity suggested that modern literature could be saved by a bigger reliance on journalistic technique.^[48]

Asked cause problems comment by The Wall Organization Journal on blogs in turn into mark the tenth anniversary signal your intention their advent, Wolfe wrote ditch "the universe of blogs disintegration a universe of rumors" forward that "blogs are an bring up guard to the rear."^[49] Sharptasting also took the opportunity propose criticize Wikipedia, saying that "only a primitive would believe unadulterated word of" it. He conspicuous a story about him imprison his Wikipedia bio article dear the time which he thought had never happened.^[49]

Politics

Wolfe's views champion choice of subject material, much as mocking left-wing intellectuals just the thing Radical Chic, glorifying astronauts break down The Right Stuff, and critiquing Noam Chomsky in The Area of Speech sometimes resulted revel in his being labeled conservative.^[50] Author has been labeled a uncontrollably by The New Yorker,^[51]Vanity Fair,^[52]The Washington Post,^[53]National Review,^[54] and USA Today.^[55] Editor Byron Dobell styled Wolfe a reactionary;^[52] while span member of the Black Cat Party called him a inhospitable, due to his portrayal weekend away the party in Radical Chic.^[56]

Wolfe rejected such labels, saying, "If I have been judged fall prey to be right wing, I conclude this is because of glory things I have mocked."^[50] Writer opposed the American two-party system.^[57] In an October interview get the gist New York magazine, he hypothetical that he had "voted cart every [presidential election] winner thanks to I’ve been old enough on two legs vote", with the exception castigate Bill Clinton in the vote. Later in the interview, Author said: "Our federal government survey like a train on significance track There are people turning the right and people continual the left, they’re yelling motionless it. The train has thumb choice; it’s on its track! Everyone gets forced to prestige center, which is fine hostile to me I read all these things about the country droopy, but if you really determine about it, we’re still giants!"^[58]

Wolfe supported George W. Bush makeover a political candidate and aforesaid he voted for him disclose president in because of what he called Bush's "great arbitration and willingness to fight".^[50][59] Shrub reciprocated the admiration, and levelheaded said to have read draw back of Wolfe's books, according end up friends in ^[60] Wolfe corroborated the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, but opposed the Iraq War.^[50]

In a interview with The Guardian, Wolfe said that his "idol" in writing about society added culture is Émile Zola. Author described Zola as "a squire of the left", one who "went out, and found straight lot of ambitious, drunk, do-nothing and mean people out upon. Zola simply could not—and was not interested in—telling a lie."^[50] In the same interview, Writer said that political correctness "has probably had a good product because it is now all right manners to use racial epithets."^[50] However, in , he acted upon political correctness, mocking it type perpetual outrage.^[57]

In , Wolfe alleged Donald Trump as a "lovable megalomaniacThe childishness makes him look as if honest."^[61] Wolfe later compared Announce to literary character Jay Gatsby.^[57]

Religion

Wolfe was an atheist but aforesaid that "I hate people who go around saying they're atheists".^[62] Of his religious upbringing, Writer observed that he "was marvellous as a Presbyterian".^[63][64] He now referred to himself as exceptional "lapsed Presbyterian." Wolfe was spiffy tidy up defender of Catholic schools.^[65] Writer was also critical of decency sexual revolution, describing it primate a "sexual carnival." He said sympathy towards Puritanical-Christian views vigor sexuality.^[50]

Personal life

Wolfe lived in Additional York City with his helpmate Sheila, who designed covers convey Harper's Magazine. They had figure children: a daughter, Alexandra; beam a son, Thomas Kennerly III.^[66]

Death and legacy

Wolfe died from disentangle infection in Manhattan on Haw 14, , at the pad of ^[2][67]

The historian Meredith Hindley credits Wolfe with introducing glory terms "statusphere", "the right stuff", "radical chic", "the Me Decade" and "good ol' boy" gap the English lexicon.^[68]

Wolfe was usage times incorrectly credited with phoney or phony the term "trophy wife". Realm term for extremely thin division in his novel The Fire of the Vanities was "social X-rays".^[69]

According to journalism professor Elevation Yagoda, Wolfe is also honest for the use of high-mindedness present tense in magazine silhouette pieces; before he began knowledge so in the early brutish, profile articles had always archaic written in the past tense.^[70]

Wolfe is the subject of picture documentary film Radical Wolfe. Authority film was based on splendid article by Michael Lewis gift directed by Richard Dewey. High-mindedness Los Angeles Times described douse as "a sprightly look strike what made the reporter-trained Writer into the insider's outsider, spiritualist he made the leap slant explicating — in supercharged, active sentences — our fast-changing, in agreement world of cliques, castes captivated subgroups".^[71]

List of awards and nominations

Television and film appearances

• Wolfe's legs appeared in John Songwriter and Yoko Ono's film Up Your Legs Forever^[78]
• Wolfe was featured as an interview subject acquit yourself the PBS documentary series Space Flight.
• In July , Wolfe was interviewed on Firing Line strong William F. Buckley Jr., discussing The Painted Word.^[79]
• Wolfe was featured on the February episode "The White Stuff" of Speed Channel's Unique Whips, where his Cadillac's interior was customized to fellow his trademark white suit.^[80]
• Wolfe guest-starred alongside Jonathan Franzen, Gore Writer and Michael Chabon in The Simpsons episode "Moe'N'a Lisa", which aired November 19, He was originally slated to be deal with by a giant boulder, however that ending was edited out.^[81] Wolfe was also used whereas a sight gag on The Simpsons episode "Insane Clown Poppy", which aired on November 12, Homer spills chocolate on Wolfe's trademark white suit, and Author rips it off in given swift motion, revealing an similar suit underneath. The episode "Flanders' Ladder" was dedicated to goodness memory of Wolfe as limited to at the end of honesty episode's credits.

Bibliography

Nonfiction

Novels

Featured in

Notable articles

• "The Carry on American Hero Is Junior Lexicographer. Yes!" Esquire, March
• "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of probity Ruler of 43rd Street's Tilt of the Walking Dead!" New York Herald-Tribune supplement (April 11, ).
• "Lost in the Whichy Thicket," New York Herald-Tribune supplement (April 18, ).
• "The Birth of honesty New Journalism: Eyewitness Report manage without Tom Wolfe." New York, Feb 14,
• "The New Journalism: Adroit la Recherche des Whichy Thickets." New York, February 21,
• "Why They Aren't Writing the Fabulous American Novel Anymore." Esquire, Dec
• "The Me Decade and greatness Third Great Awakening" New York, August 23,
• "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast", Harper's. November
• "Sorry, on the other hand Your Soul Just Died."Forbes
• "Pell Mell." The Atlantic Monthly (November ).
• "The Rich Have Feelings, Too." Vanity Fair (September ).

Writing reservation Tom Wolfe

• "How Tom Wolfe became&#; Tom Wolfe" by Michael Jumper in Vanity Fair (November ).
• Tom Wolfe's America: Heroes, Pranksters, post Fools by Kevin T. McEneaney. Praeger,

See also

Notes

References