By Madison Brown |Editor in ChiefTom Wolfe, the author and journalist whose innovative and fiery style gave birth to classics like the “The Right Stuff” and “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” died on May 12 at age 88 in New York.Wolfe was born in Richmond, Va., in 1930 and was editor of the student newspaper ag St. Christopher School. He attended Washington and Lee University, majored in English, was sports editor of the student newspaper there, and helped found a literacy magazine. He took a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. Wolfe moved to New York in 1962 to work for The New York Herald Tribune. He quickly rose to fame as he helped pioneer what became known as the “New Journalism.”He described New Journalism in “World Authors” as, “writing nonfiction, from newspaper stories to books, using basic reporting to gather the material but techniques ordinarily associated with fiction, such as scene-by-scene construction, to narrate it.”Along with being known as a revolutionary journalist, Wolfe is also known for his work as a novelist. He is most famously known for “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” which followed bond trader Sherman McCoy’s journey from Wall Street to a court in the Bronx, after hitting a black man with his car.Wolfe’s style of journalism was one that didn’t follow the who-what-when-where-how-why inverted pyramid format. His journalism was literary in nature and much more lyrical than a typical news story of his time.According to Debra Reddin van Tuyll, a professor in AU’s Department of Communication, the effect that Wolfe had on journalism is best seen in magazine journalism today.“You have to look at magazine journalism to see the residual effects of Wolfe,” said van Tuyll, a mass communication historian. “New Journalism, as he helped pioneer, is much more a magazine format than a newspaper format, and it never fit television at all. You're more likely to see his type of writing in higher quality magazines like the Atlantic, New Yorker or Smithsonian. It’s literature and literary.”
Wolfe’s style was so revolutionary that it quickly took over and devoured the "normal" journalism of his time.According to Professor William McKeen, the chairman of the department of journalism at Boston University, New Journalism was so infectious that it has become the common style of journalism today.“Wolfe, (Gaye) Talese, (Joan) Didion, Norman Mailer, etc.—their work was so influential that it has infected journalism ever since that day. I have trouble getting students to recognize how truly revolutionary these writers were because what they did has become common practice,” McKeen said.Wolfe was an inspiration to many journalists because of his intense and innovative style.Dr. van Tuyll called Wolfe and his New Journalism an inspiration to her and to many others.“Tom Wolfe inspired me, and others of my generation, to step outside the bounds of normal newsgathering and to do intensive interviews, asking questions about what people were feeling or thinking at a particular moment,” she said.McKeen fondly recounted the time that his work was compared to that of Wolfe’s.He said, “I remember once, when I was a very young reporter, I wrote a feature that was a little weird and out of the box. Next time I was in the office there was a note on my desk that the publisher wanted to see me. I figured he'd found my story—it was about a faux sock hop—offensive in some way. Turns out quite the opposite. After complimenting me for a couple of minutes, he said, ‘Looks like we’ve got our own little Tom Wolfe here.’ There was no greater praise.” Contact Madison Brown at madbrown@augusta.edu