Tom Wolfe, Innovative Nonfiction Writer and Novelist, Dies at 88

NYT ^ | 5/15/18 | By Deirdre Carmody and William Grimes

[NohSpinZone]

Tom Wolfe, an innovative journalist and novelist whose technicolor, wildly punctuated prose brought to life the worlds of California surfers, car customizers, astronauts and Manhattans moneyed status-seekers in works like “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” “The Right Stuff” and “Bonfire of the Vanities,” died on Monday in a Manhattan hospital. He was 88.

[NohSpinZone]

Rest in peace to a great author. The Right Stuff was transcendent for me in helping me learn about the bravery of our test pilots and our astronauts.

Still upset at whoever directed Bonfire for butchering that novel.

[Iron Munro]

Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

by Tom Wolfe

Going downtown to mau-mau the bureaucrats got to be the routine practice in San Francisco. The poverty program encouraged you to go in for mau-mauing. They wouldn't have known what to do without it. The bureaucrats at City Hall and in the Office of Economic Opportunity talked "ghetto" all the time, but they didn't known any more about what was going on in the Western Addition, Hunters Point, Potrero Hill, the Mission, Chinatown, or south of Market Street than they did about Zanzibar. They didn't know where to look. They didn't even know who to ask. So what could they do? Well ... they used the Ethnic Catering Service ... right ... They sat back and waited for you to come rolling in with your certified angry militants, your guaranteed frustrated ghetto youth, looking like a bunch of wild men. Then you had your test confrontation. If you were outrageous enough, if you could shake up the bureaucrats so bad that their eyes froze into iceballs and their mouths twisted up into smiles of sheer physical panic, into shit-eating grins, so to speak--then they knew you were the real goods. They knew you were the right studs to give the poverty grants and community organizing jobs to. Otherwise they wouldn't know.

There was one genius in the art of confrontation who had mau-mauing down to what you could term a laboratory science. He had it figured out so he didn't even have to bring his boys downtown in person. He would just show up with a crocus sack full of revolvers, ice picks, fish knives, switchblades, hatchets, blackjacks, gravity knives, straight razors, hand grenades, blow guns, bazookas, Molotov cocktails, tank rippers, unbelievable stuff, and he'd dump it all out on somebody's shiny walnut conference table. He'd say "These are some of the things I took off my boys last night ... I don't know, man ... Thirty minutes ago I talked a Panther out of busting up a cop ..." And they would lay money on this man's ghetto youth patrol like it was now or never ... The Ethnic Catering Service, the bureaucrats felt like it was all real. They'd say to themselves, "We've given jobs to a hundred of the toughest hard-core youth in Hunters Point. The problem is on the way to being solved." They never inquired if the bloods they were giving the jobs were the same ones who were causing the trouble. They'd say to themselves, "We don't have to find them. They find us" ... Once the Ethnic Catering Service was on the case, they felt like they were reaching all those hard-to-reach hard-to-hold hardcore hardrock blackrage badass furious funky ghetto youth.

[Albion Wilde]

I’ve read most of his books—a great writer and chronicler of American life from the 60s to the recent present. His very creative style was a profound influence on writers who came after. RIP

[ethom]

[Rummyfan]

Oh man, I was hoping for another Wolfe novel before he left us.

Bonfire of the Vanities is one of the all-time greats. And in nonfiction, The Right Stuff is just as great.

RIP to an American original, Tom Wolfe.

[LS]

Agree 100% on Bonfire. Horrible movie, awesome anti-PC book.
“pimp roll”

Loved his “A Man in Full,” “I am Charlotte Simmons” (ANY person with a college kid needs to read this), “Bonfire.”

[nwrep]

RIP

[ethom]

I hate it when we lose a good one...

[Rummyfan]

Still upset at whoever directed Bonfire for butchering that novel.

Brian DePalma. It effectively destroyed his career.

The production was chronicled here:

The Devil's Candy

[RinaseaofDs]

Always admired him. The Right Stuff is an amazing read. Bonfire of the Vanities was prophetic.

[Donkey Odious]

Watched “The Right Stuff” again just the other night. A good movie based on a better book.

Thank you, Mr. Wolfe, for adding to the lexicon of America. We will miss you......

[NohSpinZone]

Thank you for the tip! I’ll take a look.

[untenured]

Sad news. In addition to his terrific writing talent, he had this knack for exactly capturing certain slices of American life that the rest of us didn’t even know existed. That he could bring this clarity in novels was particularly impressive.

How many modern authors have generated as many clichés as he did?

[ethom]

not many authors make a solo cover of Time Magazine...

[Huskrrrr]

When I was a freshman in college (1972) The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test was required reading. I fell in love with TW’s writing style.

[Trentamj]

I liked Wolfe since I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test back when I was still in my 20s. I was also wowed when I read The Right Stuff as well as Bonfire of the Vanities. However what really sold me as his greatness was his novel A Man in Full, which I say is a philosophically-inspired novel that is (Dare I say it?) superior in quality to Ayn Rand's most major work, Atlas Shrugged.

[Trumpet 1]

Electric Cool Aid Acid Test?! The story of Ken Kesey and has he Merry Pranksters! Great Read.

[SMGFan]

That is what I thought of.

[Fair Paul]

Both great books. My quibble with The Right Stuff is that he was a little too hard on Gus Grissom.