Encyclopedia > Tom Wolfe

  Article Content

Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe (born March 2, 1931) is an American author and journalist.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Wolfe took his first newspaper job in 1956 and eventually worked for the Washington Post and the New York Herald Tribune[?] among others. While there he had experimented with using fictional techniques in feature stories.

During the New York newspaper strike, he approached Esquire Magazine about an article on the hot rod[?] and custom car[?] culture of southern California. He struggled with writing the article and editor Byron Dobell[?] suggested that Wolfe send his notes to him so they could work together on the article. Wolfe sat down and wrote Dobell a letter saying everything he wanted to say about the subject, ignoring all conventions of journalism.

Dobell removed the salutation "Dear Byron" from the top of the letter and published the notes as the article. This was the birth of the New Journalism[?], in which reporters were cut loose from journalistic conventions of the past and allowed to use all sorts of literary techniques, including free association, italics, exclamation marks (even multiple exclamation marks).

In 1965 a collection of his articles in this style was published under the title The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and Wolfe was on his way. He wrote on popular culture, architecture, and politics, whatever interested him. Although he was conservative in many ways and certainly nothing like a hippie, he became one of the most notable figures of the 1960s,

Several other books followed before Wolfe's first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities[?], was published in 1987, having previously been serialised in Rolling Stone magazine. In 1998 his novel A Man in Full was published.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Westhampton Beach, New York

... population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 805 households out of which 22.2% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.1% are married couples ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 38.4 ms