
Tom Wolfe Has Died - mackmcconnell
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/obituaries/tom-wolfe-pyrotechnic-nonfiction-writer-and-novelist-dies-at-87.html
======
wallflower
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.

~~~
segmondy
You denied other's the chance to do the same. You need to make amends.

~~~
dang
wallflower has more than made amends by providing some of the best reading on
Hacker News for many years.

~~~
bch
I’m not really fussed by ‘wallflowers transgression, but I find rationalizing
stealing from a public library by posting in an a Gucci tech/business website
a bit problematic.

~~~
dang
Oh I agree, but was just trying to mitigate the harshness with a little good
feeling. We all have enough to point fingers at ourselves about.

~~~
wallflower
Thanks, dang! I appreciate all you do for this community.

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Jun8
Sad day! For, those who want to spend time at work to reminiscence here are
some links I found interesting:

* "How Tom Wolfe Became … Tom Wolfe", a good profile from _Vanity Fair_ , 2015: [https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/how-tom-wolfe-bec...](https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/how-tom-wolfe-became-tom-wolfe)

* "Tom Wolfe", an early profile one year after the _Kool Aid Test_ had been published, from _The Harvard Crimson_ , 1969: [https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/5/8/tom-wolfe-pbibn-...](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/5/8/tom-wolfe-pbibn-april-of-1965/)

* Photos of him in 2013 from _Paris Match_ : [https://www.gettyimages.com/event/tom-wolfe-paris-match-issu...](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)

* "Tom Wolfe - The Art of Fiction", from _Paris Match_ , 1991: [https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2226/tom-wolfe-the...](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2226/tom-wolfe-the-art-of-fiction-no-123-tom-wolfe)

~~~
nyc111
Thanks for these links. How did you get a free version of the Paris Review
İnterview? A couple of days ago I tried to read some interviews and it won't
let me without a subscription.

~~~
nyc111
I see this link is locked too. İt asks for a subscription.

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mcenedella
Radical Chic:
[http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/](http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/)

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.

~~~
dash2
That's amazingly good (and long) and lots of it still seems relevant today.

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vermontdevil
Tom Wolfe writing on hangovers:

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.”

~~~
plankers
Every year, the morning after my birthday, this metaphor plagues my mind.

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quantumofmalice
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.

~~~
Applejinx
"The Painted Word" is also fantastic, if you liked "From Bauhaus to Our
House". Similar approach.

~~~
quantumofmalice
Yes, that is a great book as well.

I think "From Bauhause to Our House" is more important because we can survive
a period of terrible art: most people will simply ignore it and when it is
over you can throw most of it into the dumpster easily enough.

Unfortunately we are not free to ignore the work of architects, and correcting
their mistakes will take us centuries.

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archagon
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.

Oh, and the book was _hilarious_! It's rare that I find myself laughing out
loud at literature, but Wolfe's descriptions were just so absurd and clever.

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.

RIP.

~~~
CPAhem
It is a brilliant book, especially his description of what he thought those
poor chimpanzee astronauts were thinking and feeling.

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jgrahamc
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.

~~~
pitt1980
He wrote a pretty interesting profile of Robert Noyce, one of the co-founders
of Intel

[https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyc...](https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyce.html)

~~~
majos
Thanks for the pointer. I was unaware of 1. how important midwesterners have
been to Silicon Valley, and 2. how old the Silicon Valley-Wall Street cultural
divide is. Plus, just a fun read.

~~~
evasote
It was a really great read. My dad was a solid state electrical engineer
working on silicon, and went to Grinnell as well for his undergrad. We are
from just south of there. Nice to hear about the place

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indescions_2018
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"

In addition to all the excellent suggestions on this page. Also check out _The
Painted Word_ (1975).

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5NBoe5qHRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5NBoe5qHRE)

Art of Fiction Interview with George Plimpton

[https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/15/tom-
wolfe-193...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/15/tom-
wolfe-1931-2018/)

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swampthinker
I have to admit, I've never read a Tom Wolfe book. Does anyone have some good
recommendations?

~~~
teachrdan
I'd immediately recommend Bonfire of the Vanities. It perfectly captures NYC
in the 80s: the racial divides, the wealth inequality, and the many ways
individuals cross race and class lines. And his vivid description of how bond
traders make insane amounts of money (for the time) is unforgettable.

Frankly, Bonfire is worth reading just for unforgettable lines like this one:
"If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative
who's been arrested."

~~~
wallflower
Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" (Going broke on a million a year), p.137

"One breath of scandal, and not only would the Giscard scheme collapse but his
very career would be finished! And what would he do then? I’m already going
broke on a million a year! The appalling figures came popping up into his
brain. Last year his income had been $980,000. But he had to pay out $21,000 a
month for the $1.8 million loan he had to take out to buy the apartment... Of
the $560,000 remaining of his income last year, $44,400 was required for the
apartment’s monthly maintenance fee… $18,000 for heat, utilities, insurance
and repairs, $6,000 for lawn and hedge cutting, $8,000 for taxes. Entertaining
at home and in restaurants had come to $37,000. This was a modest sum compared
to what other people spent..."

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beautifulfreak
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.

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nextstep
I’m with Hunter S. Thompson on Wolfe:

[https://dangerousminds.net/comments/you_thieving_pile_of_alb...](https://dangerousminds.net/comments/you_thieving_pile_of_albino_warts_hunter_s._thompson_tears_tom_wolfe_a_new)

“thieving pile or albino warts”

~~~
redacted_tweet
You know that was written in jest, right? Thompson and Wolfe were great
friends.

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nyc111
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.

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shubhamjain
The evergreen quote I live by:

"No one becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe" — William Zinsser.

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jacquesm
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.

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tnolet
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.

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dfsegoat
The Right Stuff --- one of my favorite books of all time.

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hcatlin
Can we get the metric system now?

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nautilus12
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.

~~~
hcurtiss
Where did you get this impression of Wolfe?

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shampto3
While I may not agree with the parent's comment, it appears he is referring to
the term "New Journalism" which encourages a subjective point of view. This
term was apparently "codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe" [0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Journalism)

~~~
ghaff
While I really liked The Right Stuff, this is the basic problem I have with
elevating it above, say, Bonfire of the Vanities. It’s presented in the vein
of a historical account but you’re also presumably not expected to put too
much faith in specific details and characterizations. Everything is subjective
at some level of course but I’m not really a fan of it’s factual except when
things need to be colored to make a better story.

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aaroninsf
TIL Tom Wolfe was still alive.

