Wolfe was educated at Washington and Lee Universities and also at Yale, where he received a PhD in American studies.
Tom Wolfe spent his early days as a Washington Post beat reporter, where his free-association, onomatopoetic style would later become the trademark of New Journalism. In books such as The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe delves into the inner workings of the mind, writing about the unconscious decisions people make in their lives. His attention to eccentricities of human behavior and language and to questions of social status are considered unparalleled in the American literary canon.
He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Tom Wolfe is also famous for coining and defining the term
fiction-absolute
.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/tomwolfe
“The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it. ”
“A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon renaissance - And the myths that actually touched you at that time - not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas - but Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman.”
“Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about.”
“...en route to the final destination, which was always to get trashed, wasted, hammered, crunked up, bombed, wrecked, sloshed, fried, flapjacked, fucked-up, or get plainlong fucked, laid, drained, get some ass, get some head, some skull, a lube job, get your oil changed, get some brown sugar, quiff, goo, pussy...”
“You can be denounced from the heavens, and it only makes people interested.”
“Put your good where it will do the most!”
“A cult is a religion with no political power.”