I remember discovering "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" in my high school library. I eventually stole it by taking out the plastic-encased metal security dingy and devoured it more. I read it over and over until the paperback fell apart. It introduced me to a world so foreign and sparkly and rusty dangerous and yet so real. RIP Tom Wolfe for bringing us into your worlds of observation and intrigue.
Sad day! For, those who want to spend time at work to reminiscence here are some links I found interesting:<p>* "How Tom Wolfe Became … Tom Wolfe", a good profile from <i>Vanity Fair</i>, 2015: <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/how-tom-wolfe-became-tom-wolfe" rel="nofollow">https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/how-tom-wolfe-bec...</a><p>* "Tom Wolfe", an early profile one year after the <i>Kool Aid Test</i> had been published, from <i>The Harvard Crimson</i>, 1969: <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/5/8/tom-wolfe-pbibn-april-of-1965/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/5/8/tom-wolfe-pbibn-...</a><p>* Photos of him in 2013 from <i>Paris Match</i>: <a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/event/tom-wolfe-paris-match-issue-3334-166619204#writer-tom-wolfe-is-photographed-for-paris-match-on-march-29-2013-in-picture-id166413149" rel="nofollow">https://www.gettyimages.com/event/tom-wolfe-paris-match-issu...</a><p>* "Tom Wolfe - The Art of Fiction", from <i>Paris Match</i>, 1991: <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2226/tom-wolfe-the-art-of-fiction-no-123-tom-wolfe" rel="nofollow">https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2226/tom-wolfe-the...</a>
Radical Chic:
<a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/" rel="nofollow">http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/</a><p>At 2 or 3 or 4 a.m., somewhere along in there, on August 25, 1966, his 48th birthday, in fact, Leonard Bernstein woke up in the dark in a state of wild alarm. That had happened before. It was one of the forms his insomnia took. So he did the usual. He got up and walked around a bit. He felt groggy. Suddenly he had a vision, an inspiration. He could see himself, Leonard Bernstein, the egregio maestro, walking out on stage in white tie and tails in front of a full orchestra. On one side of the conductor’s podium is a piano. On the other is a chair with a guitar leaning against it. He sits in the chair and picks up the guitar. A guitar! One of those half-witted instruments, like the accordion, that are made for the Learn-To-Play-in-Eight-Days E-Z-Diagram 110-IQ 14-year-olds of Levittown! But there’s a reason. He has an anti-war message to deliver to this great starched white-throated audience in the symphony hall. He announces to them: “I love.” Just that. The effect is mortifying. All at once a Negro rises up from out of the curve of the grand piano and starts saying things like, “The audience is curiously embarrassed.” Lenny tries to start again, plays some quick numbers on the piano, says, “I love. Amo, ergo sum.” The Negro rises again and says, “The audience thinks he ought to get up and walk out. The audience thinks, ‘I am ashamed even to nudge my neighbor.’ ” Finally, Lenny gets off a heartfelt anti-war speech and exits.
Tom Wolfe writing on hangovers:<p>The telephone blasted Peter Fallow awake inside an egg with the shell peeled away and only the membranous sac holding it intact. Ah! The membranous sac was his head, and the right side of his head was on the pillow, and the yolk was as heavy as mercury, and it rolled like mercury, and it was pressing down on his right temple… If he tried to get up to answer the telephone, the yolk, the mercury, the poisoned mass, would shift and roll and rupture the sac, and his brains would fall out.”
Very sad to hear. His book "From Bauhaus to Our House" changed my life, finally giving me a plausible explanation as to how we managed to create such a horrific built environment post WW2.
Read "The Right Stuff" for the first time recently. I didn't find myself particularly invested in the Mercury astronauts' story, but Wolfe's utterly delightful prose made it hard to pull away. Loved the mantra-like phrases that his writing would circle around: climbing the ziggurat, being left behind, single-combat warriors, the titular right stuff (among many others). Coupled with the fast-talking pace and the incredibly vivid language (waters "about as clear as the eyeballs of a poisoned bass!"), it almost read like poetry at times.<p>Oh, and the book was <i>hilarious</i>! It's rare that I find myself laughing out loud at literature, but Wolfe's descriptions were just so absurd and clever.<p>If you can find a torrent, I highly recommend Michael Prichard's Books on Tape recording. The quality is low but the narration is just exceptional.<p>RIP.
Years ago when I was living in the Bay Area, Tom Wolfe was hanging around doing research for a book on Silicon Valley. The rumour was that he left with the opinion that nothing interesting worth writing about happened there.
RIP. Feels like the end of an era for New Yorkers. A certain longform vigor. Jimmy Breslin on JFK's assassination. Peter Maas and Serpico. Norman Mailer running for mayor of the "51st State"<p>In addition to all the excellent suggestions on this page. Also check out <i>The Painted Word</i> (1975).<p>Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5NBoe5qHRE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5NBoe5qHRE</a><p>Art of Fiction Interview with George Plimpton<p><a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/15/tom-wolfe-1931-2018/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/15/tom-wolfe-193...</a>
He was also a prolific letter writer. A very smart friend of mine was his personal trainer when he stayed in the Hamptons, and the two struck up a friendship. Wolfe corresponded with him, sending long handwritten letters. Maybe it was part of his research process, but I think he just liked people and was genuinely curious about others.
I’m with Hunter S. Thompson on Wolfe:<p><a href="https://dangerousminds.net/comments/you_thieving_pile_of_albino_warts_hunter_s._thompson_tears_tom_wolfe_a_new" rel="nofollow">https://dangerousminds.net/comments/you_thieving_pile_of_alb...</a><p>“thieving pile or albino warts”
I write a blog in Turkish. I write about current affairs and also other subjects that interests me. Once in a while I fall into Ecclesiastes type of borderline nihilism and I say to myself "Why write at all; all is vain; all is for naught." Then I stop writing for a while. I reason that writing is academic; it is useless. It changes nothing. It is so much better to do something useful like programming or building something and selling it. But now after reading the comments here I see that Tom Wolfe's writing changed so many people's life! In a positive way. Of course, it's a different thing that one needs to write well at that level. But it seems that writing is not that useless after all.
I would fly back-and-forth between Toronto and Amsterdam on a two week schedule and I'd buy piles of books in airport kiosks, to read them on the plane because I can't sleep on a plane. Most of those books did not hang around to be read for a second time but all of Tom Wolfe's books are still here and have been read to bits. The man has a way with words that allow you to really get into the heads of the characters, they come to life in a way that very few other writers have been able to do for me.
For anyone remotely interested in the sense and nonsense of modern art amd and architecture I strongly recommend Wolfe's "The Painted Word" and "From our House to Bauhaus". Both extremely funny and sharp.
So this is one of the people thats responsible for urging journalists to be less objective? Could explain why journalistic integrity is such a mess right now. I didn't even know there was such a movement.