Tom Wolfe, author of such works as Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff, and early developer of the “New Journalism” style, died yesterday at the age of 88. According to the New York Times, he had been hospitalized with an infection.
Wolfe, known for his trademark white suit, helped usher in an era of journalism in which a literary style and the experience of the author were at the forefront of any reported work, the influences of which can be seen in nearly every political or celebrity profile one reads today. He applied this to his coverage of everything from the '60s counterculture to political corruption in New York City, all with an addicting, baroque prose. He’s also credited with coining phrases like “radical chic” and “the Me decade.”
Like anyone with a career that spanned decades, Wolfe’s work caused controversy. After turning his New York Magazine article about a fundraiser for the Black Panthers hosted by Felicia Montealegre Bernstein (wife of composer Leonard Bernstein) into the book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, one member of the Panthers called him a “dirty, blatant, lying, racist dog.” Bernstein’s daughter, Jamie, later wrote of Wolfe’s New York Magazine article, “J. Edgar Hoover himself may well have shed a tear of gratitude that this callow journalist had done so much of the bureau’s work by discrediting the left-wing New York Jewish liberals while simultaneously pitting them against the black activist movement―thereby disempowering both groups in a single deft stroke.”
Wolfe’s style helped to change the way people thought of the relationship between journalism and literature, and paved the way for the fusing of the two that now feels so common. Wolfe’s agent, Lynn Nesbit, said of his legacy to the Wall Street Journal, "He is not just an American icon, but he had a huge international literary reputation. All the same, he was one of the most modest and kindest people I have ever met.”