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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTom Wolfe, Pyrotechnic Nonfiction Writer and Novelist, Dies at 87
By Deirdre Carmody and William Grimes
May 15, 2018
Tom Wolfe, an innovative journalist whose technicolor, wildly punctuated prose brought to life the worlds of California surfers, car customizers, astronauts and Manhattans moneyed status-seekers in works like The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities, died on Monday in a Manhattan hospital. He was 87.
His death was confirmed by his agent, Lynn Nesbit, who said Mr. Wolfe had been hospitalized with an infection. He had lived in New York since joining The New York Herald Tribune as a reporter in 1962.
In his use of novelistic techniques in his nonfiction, Mr. Wolfe, beginning in the 1960s, helped create the enormously influential hybrid known as the New Journalism.
From 1965 to 1981 Mr. Wolfe produced nine nonfiction books. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, an account of his reportorial travels in California with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters as they spread the gospel of LSD, remains a classic chronicle of the counterculture, still the best account fictional or non, in print or on film of the genesis of the sixties hipster subculture, the press critic Jack Shafer wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review on the books 40th anniversary.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/obituaries/tom-wolfe-pyrotechnic-nonfiction-writer-and-novelist-dies-at-87.html
Zoonart
(11,749 posts)Mee too... one of my favorite writers.
dalton99a
(81,065 posts)lame54
(35,138 posts)betsuni
(25,128 posts)Love Tom Wolfe.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,085 posts)I would read the book a few years after I read the movie. It had a very distinctive style, not anything like what you'd expect from a piece of historical non-fiction.
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)and loved it. I even like his critically panned books. The Right Stuff is one of my top movies.
John1956PA
(2,654 posts)The congenial author delighted the audience with his wit and humorous takes on the ironies of contemporary national politics. One of the themes he conveyed was that the public, in its collective value judgments as to the worthiness of various news stories, was becoming more receptive of tabloid-level reporting.
mahatmakanejeeves
(56,892 posts)I'm sorry to see him go.
A young Tom Wolfe in New York, via Time
I enjoyed "The Bonfire of the Vanities." I hear the movie wasn't well received, but the book was funny.
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)audiences. Basically , they dumbed it down.
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)I felt like I was on the bus and at the shows with them.
Ligyron
(7,592 posts)Best book yet on The Hippies.
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)lunamagica
(9,967 posts)Hassler
(3,321 posts)He'd sign, Tom Wolfe.
nolabear
(41,915 posts)In fact theyve changed so much that Front Page doesnt mean anything.
bucolic_frolic
(42,670 posts)was an underrated movie, and a box office bomb, though I think as satire of the age it portrayed, it was perceived as stereotypical and racist to some if not many. Or it could have been the screenplay - in the book I don't recall the Bruce Willis character in an over-narration asides to cue in the audience. Tom Hanks when he plays satire is so subtle - "Bonfire of the Vanities", "Charlie Wilson's War" for example.
I tried to read the book, and was impressed with Wolfe's whiz!BANG*!* methods of using the language, but didn't have time for it.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)R.I.P. Tom Wolfe.
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)Bruce Willis because he had box office clout.
LisaM
(27,759 posts)I remember watching him on "Nightline" arguing about deconstructionalism in modern fiction with Margaret Atwood. Those were the days, eh?
Ligyron
(7,592 posts)Glorfindel
(9,706 posts)I enjoyed his books immensely. The world is a poorer place.