Wolfe, Tom (1931—)

Since the 1960s, American journalist Tom Wolfe has been one of the chief chroniclers of the times. Known for analyzing trends and exposing inherent cultural absurdities, Wolfe has coined terminology such as "radical chic" and "the Me decade." He has the knack for pinpointing an age, wrapping it up in vivid and readable prose, and presenting it back to society as a kind of mirror. Wolfe was one of the first in a cadre of writers—among them, Jimmy Breslin, Truman Capote, Hunter Thompson, and Gay Talese—to adopt a style called the New Journalism, the practice of writing nonfiction with many of the traditional storytelling elements of fiction. In addition, Wolfe distinguished himself by his frequent use of unorthodox punctuation and spelling and by peppering his text with interjections and onomatopoeia. Some of his most famous works include The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined Baby (1965), The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), and Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970). He was also applauded for his 1979 portrait of the early era of the American space program, The Right Stuff, and for his first, and so far only, novel, 1987's social satire Bonfire of the Vanities. Over a decade later, in late 1998, Wolfe again won warm critical reception with his second novel, A Man in Full, which shot to the top of the best-seller lists.

Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, Jr. was born on March 2, 1931, in Richmond, Virginia. In high school, Wolfe was the editor of his student newspaper, and he went on to serve as sports editor of the campus paper at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where he also cofounded the literary quarterly Shenandoah. He received his bachelor's degree in English in 1951. After that, he went on to obtain a doctoral degree in American studies at Yale University in 1957. Meanwhile, eager to begin a professional writing career, he sent out one hundred letters to publications, but received just three responses—two of them negative. He thus went to work at the Springfield Union in Massachusetts from 1956 to 1959, then moved to the Washington Post in June of 1959, where he won awards for reporting and humor.

In 1962 Wolfe began working at the New York Herald Tribune. There, he had the opportunity to contribute to its Sunday supplement, New York, which later became an independent magazine. During a newspaper strike, Wolfe landed an assignment for Esquire writing about the custom car craze in California. Though he was enamored of his subject matter—the chrome-laden, supercharged vehicles and their young enthusiasts—Wolfe told his editor that he could not manage to construct a story. He was told to type up his notes and send them in so that another writer could do the job. The editor was so struck with Wolfe's lengthy stream-of-consciousness descriptions and musings that he ran it unaltered. This became "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," which Wolfe later included in his 1965 collection of essays, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined Baby. The article's fertile detail, hip language, and unusual punctuation became Wolfe's trademarks.

Early on, Wolfe's style was characterized as gimmicky, but also applauded as the best way to approach some of the wacky topics he covered for his pieces. How better to record the rise in LSD and growth of the hippies than to use the language of the people about whom he wrote? Indeed, Wolfe eloquently outlined the 1960s drug era in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in documenting the antics of novelist Ken Kesey and his "Merry Pranksters," a group of LSD users on the West Coast who personified hippie culture. Subsequently, Wolfe delighted some and angered others in Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, actually two separate long essays. Radical Chic was his bitingly humorous depiction of a fundraising party given by the white bourgeois in support of the Black Panthers. His satiric observations cut too close to the bone for some white liberals and black activists; still others were appalled by his seemingly cruel mimicry. However, many critics praised his sharp eye and sociological approach.

Wolfe toned down his style somewhat to pen The Right Stuff in 1979, a best-seller explaining the rise of NASA and the birth of the program to send an American into space. Much of the book's focus was on the people involved, from Chuck Yeager, the Air Force pilot who first broke the sound barrier, to the Apollo Seven astronauts and their families. It gave a personal, behind-the-scenes look at the lives affected by the space program, painting the men not only as heroes with the requisite "stuff" needed to fulfill such a duty, but as regular humans with failings and feelings as well. Wolfe's nonfiction throughout his career was as gripping as fiction due to his use of the genre's devices: dialogue, a shifting point-of-view, character development, and intensive descriptions of setting and other physical qualities in a scene. He finally tried his hand at a novel in 1987, publishing the widely praised Bonfire of the Vanities, a keen and darkly witty profile of 1980s Americana, from the bottom social strata to the top. His second novel, A Man in Full (1998), dealt with similar themes of race and class in late-twentieth-century America, but took place in the upand-coming metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia. A Man in Full was trademark Wolfe, featuring encylopedic knowledge of a variety of subcultures and incisive observations about each. It, too, was a popular and critical success.

Being one of the most visible purveyors of the art known as New Journalism, Wolfe co-edited and contributed to an anthology titled The New Journalism in 1973. A staple in some college journalism courses, the volume expertly collects some of the finest examples of the practice from top names in the field and explained the constructs involved. Wolfe has also served as a contributing editor of Esquire magazine since 1977. Though his novel was considered a fine achievement, his contribution to the field of literature generally rests on his nonfiction sociocultural examinations.

—Geri Speace

Further Reading:

Lounsberry, Barbara, "Tom Wolfe." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 152: American Novelists Since World War II, Fourth Series. James Giles and Wanda Giles, editors. Detroit, Gale Research, 1995.

McKeen, William. Tom Wolfe. New York, Twayne, 1995.

Salamon, Julie. The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

Scura, Dorothy M., editor. Conversations with Tom Wolfe. Jackson, University of Mississippi Press, 1990.

Shomette, Doug, editor. The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1992.

Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson, editors. The New Journalism. New York, Harper, 1973.