Author and journalist Tom Wolfe, who wrote such indelible works as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and The Right Stuff, died May 15, 2018, at 88, at a Manhattan hospital. His death was reported by his literary agent, Lynn Nesbit.
Wolfe was a constant presence on the New York social scene, always clad in one of his signature white suits.
It was Wolfe‘s 1979 book about America’s postwar research on rocket-powered aircraft, The Right Stuff, that brought him to the attention of mainstream audiences. The book centered on test pilot Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier, and subsequently on the seven Mercury astronauts chosen by NASA to pilot the nation’s first manned spaceflights. The men selected were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton and John Glenn.
The Right Stuff was turned into a 1983 feature film starring Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager, Ed Harris as John Glenn, Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard, and Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper. Levon Helm also appeared as a test pilot and narrator.
Related: Sam Shepard died on July 27, 2017
Remembering Tom Wolfe, one of the central makers of modern American prose: https://t.co/jk16oeYADY pic.twitter.com/vf4oHVm7Ic
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) May 15, 2018
Wolfe was born on March 2, 1930 in Richmond, VA. From his official biography: “He was educated at Washington and Lee (B.A., 1951) and Yale (Ph.D., American Studies, 1957) universities. In December 1956, he took a job as a reporter on the Springfield (Massachusetts) Union. In 1962 he became a reporter for the New York Herald-Tribune and, in addition, one of the two staff writers (Jimmy Breslin was the other) of New York magazine, which began as the Herald-Tribune’s Sunday supplement.
“In 1968 he published two bestsellers on the same day: The Pump House Gang, made up of more articles about life in the sixties, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a nonfiction story of the hippie era.
“In 1979 Wolfe completed a book he had been at work on for more than six years, an account of the rocket airplane experiments of the post World War II era and the early space program focusing upon the psychology of the rocket pilots and the astronauts and the competition between them. The Right Stuff became a bestseller and won the American Book Award for nonfiction, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Harold Vursell Award for prose style, and the Columbia Journalism Award.
“In 1984 and 1985 Wolfe wrote his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, in serial form against a deadline of every two weeks for Rolling Stone magazine. It came out in book form in 1987. A story of the money-feverish 1980s in New York, The Bonfire of the Vanities was number one of the New York Times bestseller list for two months and remained on the list for more than a year, selling over 800,000 copies in hardcover. It also became the number-one bestselling paperback, with sales above two million.”
Watch the official trailer for The Right Stuff
Watch the final scene, narrated by Levon Helm
Jerry, Rock Scully, and Tom Wolfe in the Haight, Fall 1966
Photo: Ted Streshinsky pic.twitter.com/xzeNv7o3el
— Jerry Garcia (@jerrygarcia) May 15, 2018
1 Comment so far
Jump into a conversationClose to the holiday season in November of 2009
I enjoyed listening to the writer Tom Wolfe lecture in Oakland
It was in the beautiful Music Hall of “the institution” Carnegie Museum
After the lecture he signed books
He sat in an oversized wing back chair
The long table was draped in snow white linen
Assistants (the elves) opened copies & slid them in front of his hands
Behind him, a massive fireplace, many kinds of marble, you know the setting, sumptuous
It did feel very much like waiting in line to see Santa
I asked him if I could sit on his lap
Tell him what I wanted for Christmas
His head shot up & we had a laugh
It was great fun