Tom Wolfe, 1931 – 2018
Tom Wolfe, author of "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", "The Right Stuff" and "Bonfire of the Vanities", has died, aged 87.
Wolfe's 1973 anthology, "The New Journalism", defined an era in news reporting. It featured work that combined literary techniques with traditional journalism, by writers including Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion.
He contributed extensively to the genre he defined. "Acid Test" (1968), which followed the psychedelic journey of countercultural collective the Merry Pranksters, and "The Right Stuff" (1979), an epic investigation into the lives of astronauts, were both cultural touchstones that helped to define their respective eras.
Although the New Journalism was Wolfe's response to the decline of the American novel, he also wrote several novels himself. His first two, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), and A Man in Full (1998), captured the racial tension and greed of 1980s America, and the subsequent racial tension and collapse into debt of 1990s America, in a way that feels especially relevant now.
Tom Wolfe books available at Toronto Public Library:
"The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby" by Tom Wolfe (1965)
"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", by Tom Wolfe (1968)
"Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flack Catchers" by Tom Wolfe (1970)
"Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine" by Tom Wolfe (1976)
"The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe (1979)
"In Our Time", by Tom Wolfe (1980)
"From Bauhaus to Our House", by Tom Wolfe (1981)
"The Purple Decades: A Reader" by Tom Wolfe (1982)
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)
"A Man in Full" by Tom Wolfe (1998)
"Hooking Up" by Tom Wolfe (2000)
"I Am Charlotte Simmons" by Tom Wolfe (2004)
"Back to Blood" by Tom Wolfe (2012)
"The Kingdom of Speech" by Tom Wolfe (2016)
One thought on “Tom Wolfe, 1931 – 2018”
he was so good. just recently re-read the right stuff, was fantastic