Tom Wolfe
Born 1931 · Died 2018
Tom Wolfe was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He was educated at Washington and Lee (B.A., 1951) and Yale (Ph.D., American Studies, 1957) universities. In December 1956, he took a job as a reporter on the Springfield (Massachusetts) Union. This was the beginning of a ten-year newspaper career, most of it spent as a general assignment reporter. For six months in 1960 he served as The Washington Post's Latin American correspondent and won the Washington Newspaper Guild's foreign news prize for his coverage of Cuba.
In 1962 he became a reporter for the New York Herald-Tribune and, in addition, one of the two staff writers (Jimmy Breslin was the other) of New York magazine, which began as the Herald-Tribune's Sunday supplement. While still a daily reporter for the Herald-Tribune, he completed his first book, a collection of articles about the flamboyant Sixties written for New York and Esquire and published in 1965 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux as The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. The book became a bestseller and established Wolfe as a leading figure in the literary experiments in nonfiction that became known as New Journalism.
In 1968 he published two bestsellers on the same day: The Pump House Gang, made up of more articles about life in the sixties, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a nonfiction story of the hippie era.
Quotes
“The demolition derby is, pure and simple, a form of gladiatorial combat for our times.”
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby “At this weak, pale, tabescent moment in the history of American literature, we need a battalion, a brigade, of Zolas to head out into this wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping, Baroque country of ours and reclaim it as literary property.”
"Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast", in Harper’s Magazine November 1989
Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0), chosen with AI.
Books by Tom Wolfe in order
Books by Tom Wolfe in the order they were published, from The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) to Wonderings of the Wolfe (2016).
- 1The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby
The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby1965 - 2The Purple Decades-A Reader
The Purple Decades-A Reader1965 - 3The Pumphouse (Pump House) Gang Tom Wolfe Bantam Paperback N
The Pumphouse (Pump House) Gang Tom Wolfe Bantam Paperback N4716 19691966 - 4Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, and Other Stories, Sk
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, and Other Stories, Sketches, and Essays1967 - 5Electric Kool-aid Acid Test "Invalid See 0553257943"
Electric Kool-aid Acid Test "Invalid See 0553257943"1968 - 6Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers1970 - 7The New Journalism
The New Journalism1973 - 8The Right Stuff
The Right Stuff1973 - 9Painted Word 1ST Edition
Painted Word 1ST Edition1975 - 10From Bauhaus to Our House
From Bauhaus to Our House1980 - 11In Our Time
In Our Time1980 - 12Underneath the I-Beams. Sequel to the Painted WordUnderneath the I-Beams. Sequel to the Painted Word1981
- 13Selected from The Right Stuff
Selected from The Right Stuff1991 - 14The Easter Bunny and His Friends
The Easter Bunny and His Friends1992 - 15Two Complete Books
Two Complete Books1994 - 16A Man in Full
A Man in Full1998 - 17Hooking Up
Hooking Up2000 - 18I Am Charlotte Simmons
I Am Charlotte Simmons2004 - 19La Izquierda Exquisita & Mau-mauando Al Parachoques
La Izquierda Exquisita & Mau-mauando Al Parachoques2011 - 20Back to Blood
Back to Blood2012 - 21El Nuevo Periodismo
El Nuevo Periodismo2012 - 22The Kingdom of Speech
The Kingdom of Speech2016 - 23Wonderings of the WolfeWonderings of the Wolfe2016
- 24Thebonfire of the Vanities
Thebonfire of the Vanities