Wolfe, Tom (1931– )

US journalist and novelist. In the 1960s he was a founder of the ‘New Journalism’, which brought fiction's methods to reportage. Wolfe recorded US customs and fashions in pop-style essays in, for example, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). His sharp social criticisms were applied to 1980s New York in the best-selling novel The Bonfire of the Vanities (1988; filmed 1990).

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Wolfe graduated from Yale University and worked as a journalist for both newspapers and magazines. He was the Latin American correspondent for the Washington Post 1959–62. His other books include The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965); Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970); The Painted Word (1975), about art; The Right Stuff (1979, filmed 1983), about the first US astronauts; and From Bauhaus to Our House (1981), about modern architecture. His novel A Man in Full was published in 1998, and a collection of essays, Hooking Up, in 2000.