RiP Tom Wolfe

American author Tom Wolfe has died, aged 88.

Wolfe was the author of 17 works of fiction and nonfiction, including his bestselling debut The Bonfire of the Vanities (Vintage), and several nonfiction books such as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, where he documeted fellow novelist Ken Kesey’s experiments with psychadelic drugs, and The Right Stuff (both Vintage), which chronicled the early years fo America’s space program and received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1980.

His last book in 2016 was The Kingdom of Speech (Jonathan Cape), a critique of Charles Darwin and Chomsky.

Wolfe was regarded as one of the pioneers of the New Journalism movement, a style of writing characterised by the author placing themselves in their nonfiction writing. He moved to fiction writing in 1987 with The Bonfire of the Vanities, which went on to become a bestseller in the US and led to a film adaptation starring Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis.

In 2010, he received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Dan Franklin, associate publisher at Penguin Random House UK, writes:

‘I first fell under Tom Wolfe’s spell during my hippie days, Electric Kool Aid Acid Test being a compulsory text, then came the amazing The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities, showing that there was nothing that this man couldn’t do, and that despite his many imitators no one did it better. Indeed no one wrote a sentence like Tom Wolfe did, full of capitals and exclamation marks and begging to be read aloud. In person Wolfe was the Southern gentleman of legend, kind, funny, old-fashioned. He was a pillar of the Cape list and will be much missed.’

(Image credit: Susan Sterner for the White House)

Category: Obituaries