Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe (1930–2018) was an American author and journalist who was one of the founders of New Journalism and one of the most brilliant and entertaining prose stylists of the twentieth century. Born in Richmond, Virginia, he studied at Washington and Lee University and received a doctorate in American Studies from Yale. His early journalism, collected in books like The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965) and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), revolutionised American literary journalism with its flamboyant style and novelistic techniques. Wolfe's major works of nonfiction include The Right Stuff (1979), about the early American astronaut program, and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970). His debut novel The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) is one of the defining novels of 1980s New York, a satirical panorama of race, class, and status in the city. His subsequent novels include A Man in Full (1998) and I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004). He received the National Book Foundation's Distinguished Contribution to American Letters award in 2010. Throughout his career Wolfe was recognised by his trademark white suit, his combative engagement with literary culture, and his insistence on rigorous reporting as the foundation of literary nonfiction.