(note-no anonymous postings unless I determine your identity or career is at risk, if you just want to be unknown, your e-mail will not be printed.)

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I was Kesey's lawyer. I picked up Tom Wolfe at the airport and drove him down to San Mateo County to see Kesey in jail. My daughter, 5 years old, promptly spilled a Coca Cola all over his white suit. The guy was such a gentleman. He never copped an attitude and I'll tell you this, he never took notes. He only made one mistake in that book.

Brian Rohan

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Amen. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was a birthday party gift staple for us middle school age kids in Laurel Canyon back in the day. If your boyfriend gave it to you, (as did mine) you just really knew he loved you.

Kerry Gogan

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Will never forget the phrase, “boiling teeth,” as he described the smiles of dowagers on the Upper East Side.
One of a kind. He will be missed.

John Hummer

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Clagett was a mess. He ran the only writing seminar at Midd, so if I was going to write for credit I had to go through him. He was on the other side throughout, plus I suspect the new culture threatened his entire sense of order. RIP Tom Wolfe. He elevated low culture until it ruled.

Peter Knobler
Middlebury ‘68
Crawdaddy ‘71-79

P.S. Writers were on their own up there. I reviewed Cream in concert for the Campus. And the March on Washington when we levitated the Pentagon. And the night when I saw Hendrix sit in w James Cotton at the Cafe au Go Go. Any way to bring the ‘60s to the college despite their kicking and screaming. Clagett wanted none of it.

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Thanks for this, Bob. It's nearly impossible, I think, to really articulate how important Wolfe was. He and Hunter changed the whole paradigm.

Sam Smith

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A great read Bob on Tom Wolfe who inspired a generation of writers. Keroauc's "On The Road" came first for many of us though. But a generation of music journalists including Paul Williams, Michael Lydon, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Nick Kent, Nick Tosches, Robert Palmer, Lenny Kaye, and the great Grover Lewis owe much to Wolfe (as did Gay Talese). I saw Wolfe speak at York University where I was taking film. The full Wolfe charm white suit and all. But it's his words and his style I remember most. And tried to emulate before I found styles of my own.

Larry LeBlanc

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Terry Southern came before. No slight on Wolfe

Luke Lewis

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Feeling this one. Kool Aid Acid Test, Right Stuff, Bonfire, Pump house, Bauhaus, ... these were the novels of my formative years (well, add in some Kesey, Kerouac, Tom Robbins and that was about it).

Wolfe is from Richmond where I've lived for 30 years. Went to high school at St Christopher's where my son goes, graduated from my alma mater, Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va. It seems like I've felt connected not just to him but his writings my whole life.

He's had a special place in my heart for decades. He spoke at his alma mater when I was there. I still have my autographed copy of Bonfire. My paperback Koolaid Acid Test that he inscribed "Craig, have a good trip) was sadly lost when my basement room flooded in law school.

Craig Davis

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Bob, "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" changed my life as well!
Thanks for Honoring Tom Wolfe today.

Alan Oreman

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Thanks Bob. He was simply the very best.

Geoff

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Thanks for this one Bob - I spent 8.5 years in New York, and I believe that Bonfire of the Vanities is the definitive account of what real city life is like. RIP

Emanuel Feemark

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Brilliant. Truth.

And as a fellow Richmonder I thank you.

Cheers,

Dave Schools

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All true Bob. I booked him at colleges in the 80s and he was exactly what you would expect. Smart, wry, slightly distant and completely comfortable in his own skin. All his work remains relevant and ripe for rediscovery but Radical Chic stands out for me, especially these days.

reachnyc

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Great column on Tom Wolfe. Glad to know that I wasn't the only fish out of water in freshman Creative Writing at Middlebury. Didn't quite have the Springtime for Hitler reaction to my work, but realized that Breadloaf wasn't in my future.

Mike Wyatt

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"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," was rightfully de rigueur in the late
sixties but I most remember how the first page of "The Right Stuff"
grabbed me like the first page of Robert Penn Warren's "All The Kings Men" did. Could anyone really write that beautifully? I couldn't put it down and I was sad when I finished it knowing that Mr. Wolfe was not going to take me through Project Gemini next. RIP.

William Nollman

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Thank you Bob. Great eulogy.. you nailed it. I was born in between the boomers and X-ers .. we are called Generation Jones.. go figure. However, I listened to my older cousins and friends and read anything Tom Wolfe wrote as I knew it WAS necessary in order to at the very least, get through this life with a smile on my face during so many screwed up decades in a row. I even read "I am Charlotte Simmons" when critics were putting him down for writing it! I decided to read it because once again, the critics obviously hadn't read beyond the blurb on the back! Suddenly, everyone decided it was a great book. yeah .. they should have asked people who took the time to read it! Great, Great, Great, insightful, spot-on literature in current culture and about current culture. Geez.. a light went out in the universe. The cool pieces of the world are today, just a bit less COOL or KOOL... Though, I know many a BIC lighter will be shining in unending applause, forever. G*dspeed Tom Wolfe.

Be

Beki Brindle-Scala
Chester, NY

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Thanks, I'm glad you got to hear from him. I started reading his
stories in the Herald-Tribune Sunday magazine, in the mid-sixties. He
gave me a look at cultural back alleys that I knew existed, but I
hadn't seen or touched yet. The First Tycoon of Teen, was a look at
Phil Spector that was unlike anything in print, The Noonday
Underground, took me to a subterranean Mod disco where kids, working
in dreary offices, went to dance on their lunch hours. They longed to
stay in the club, work there, never leave, stay in "The Life." Then in
'68 "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, along with my impending draft,
permanently changed my life direction, I never did work a 'straight
job' I'm still in "The Life'"

Paul Zullo

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Great writer!!! Bonfire of the Vanities was great but I loved Man in Full. The part where the main character struggled to find or panhandle to get a dime to make a phone call is classic

markrandy55

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My honors US history teacher in the early 90s, when he realized we were running out of class time, had us skip WW2 so we could read "Electric Kool Acid Test" and cover Vietnam. I'm sure today some helicopter parent would complain. To 20 smart kids, in rural NH, where the American Legion had political power, reading Tom Wolfe felt as mind-altering as the adventures of those he covered.

Francis Doehner

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Great write up Bob. My favorite Wolfe of all time is the collection "Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine," I have the completely worn out paperback, and have read all the essays at least a dozen times over the years. If I have my way I will be buried with it. It includes the infamous Lenny Bernstein/Panthers party, the Me Decade stuff, and a tremendous novella about a black baseball player struggling to get "The Commercial" right and still stay "black enough." Insanely great stuff.

jimeddy

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I was waiting to be assigned at the Fort Campbell Processing Center after returning from Vietnam during the fall of 1970. To pass the time, I had picked up the paperback version of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and couldn’t believe what I was reading - what a great book! I couldn’t put it down; luckily I was stuck there for several days and had plenty of time to finish it. That book, along with “On The Road” and Hunter Thompson’s Hells Angels account inspired many free spirited road miles for a whole generation. Finally we had a national voice!

So here’s to Tom Wolfe, a trail blazer with a resounding voice that did it with honesty and style - thank you Tom.

Marty Jorgensen

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I met the great Tom Wolfe only once, but so memorably, at a fitness club on New York’s upper East Side where we were both exercising. It was at least ten years ago and I recognised him even without his trademark white suit. He was thin and friendly and talked with a slight southern accent which was charming. I broke through when I told him that I too had published fiction in Rolling Stone (“Cold and Electric” Jan 1980) and that there weren’t many of us who could claim that honor. (Although I suppose you could count Rolling Stone regular Hunter Thomson as a fiction writer as well and, interestingly enough, when I did meet Hunter (like Tom only once) at a Rolling Stone Christmas Party he told me his favorite writer was, like me, F. Scott Fitzgerald. From Gatsby to Gonzo ...) For me, Tom Wolfe was the first legitimate rock ’n roll author who actually thrived in the established literary world and more than “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” it was his earlier collection of essays, “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby”, that probably changed my life’s direction in some imperceptible way by treating my teen age obsessions with both seriousness and wit from a mature author's perspective. I mean, he was writing about pop icons like radio DJ Murray the K (a star in the NY area) as "The Fifth Beatle” and declaring Phil Spector to be "The First Tycoon of Teen” and giving West Coast custom car designer Ed "Big Daddy” Roth his due respect. Although many of these essays had appeared previously in Esquire, having them bound all together in a actual hard cover book gave credence to what even back then I believed to be sacred. Tom was not only a brilliant writer but also a dandy who dressed in bespoke sartorial splendor - the rightful heir to Mark Twain in both style and substance I suppose!

I remember telling Tom that I was writing a new novel that took place in East Hampton and NYC in the 70’s when everything was changing, kind of inspired by Bonfire of the Vanities, with both fictional and real characters and he seemed genuinely pleased and interested and I promised to send him a copy when it came out ...

From Paris,
Elliott Murphy

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I interviewed Tom Wolfe for NBC News (I was a field producer at the time) at his upper East Side townhouse. This was back when personal video cameras were becoming popular (they were bulky things), and Wolfe had written a story about how in the future the entire city of London, England would be a theme park where people would videotape themselves all day and night with cameras attached to hats. Basically, Wolfe predicted the selfie and our need to video tape the experience, rather than enjoy the experience for itself. Mr. Wolfe was gracious and insightful and, as I recall, he didn't mind me throwing in a few non-interview questions about "The Right Stuff." I remember that interview because it was one of my favorite.

Philip A. Wasserman

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An amazing eulogy. Thanks.

Mark Telloyan

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"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" changed my life!

Further,

Larry Green

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I have been a lecture agent since 1972. Between 1972-1984, I worked for the American Program Bureau in Chestnut Hill, MA (still in existence). Each agent was assigned to a series of the company's clients to be a "liaison" doing things like clearing dates and keeping the speakers happy in all areas of interaction with APB.

It was my luck to be "given" Tom Wolfe. He was one of the nicest persons you could ever meet and had "Southern manners" which made all his requests pleasant and attainable. I enjoyed our many conversations. He never talked down to the listener, if you know what I mean.
I still have in my possession several notes/letters he wrote to me about things he needed or comments on the business. It is hard to believe now but that is how things were done 40 years ago-you wrote something, mailed it and got a response.
What really stands out for me (and why I have saved these documents) is that Tom wrote them in cursive. I have worked with hundreds of folks over the years (even Presidents and Prime Ministers) but no one wrote so beautifully. They are unlike anything else.
This man had "class".

Tony Colao
Easthampton, MA

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Tom Wolfe had just published "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" when I arrived in New York in 1968. I saw him on the street a couple of times and we made eye contact the last time I saw him. Of course, neither of us said anything, but I knew from his smile that he remembered seeing me before. Maybe not, but that's how I remember that moment. I read all of his books as they were published (until "Bonfire"). He was also a neighborhood activist and was the block association president for his street on the upper east side, a real "man in full." Thanks, Bob, for this memorial.

Tom Kirby

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Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Gail Sheehy, Nora Ephron, and art design by Milton Glaser. Bravo to Clay Felker for creating a haven for the politics and pop culture of its day, and a great read every week.

Paul Brownstein

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Amazing tribute to Tom Wolfe, thank you for this! He was a writer who changed my life. It was his invention of New Journalism that changed the way we heard and told stories. He crafted a new set of norms meant to break all the rules that desperately needed to be broken. The storyteller belonged in the story, fact or fiction, which is precisely why he acknowledged you as autobiographer qua music news reporter. You and the music are inseparable, as were Tom and his biting critiques of hypocrisy.

When I first read his 1989 manifesto in Harpers, "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast," I knew the coming shift in literature was more than cosmetic. To combine that public statement of intent with a novel as perfect as "Bonfire of the Vanities" would have itself constituted a life achievement, but he was just getting started.

Important works of literary fiction that are fully entertaining may not be in the same demand today as they were when we learned to love words as life inspirations. Yet when we remember Tom Wolfe as author and provocateur, we remember what is possible when we demand as much of our artists as they demand of themselves. Words matter. Stories matter. Tom Wolfe matters.

Ken Goldstein
Los Angeles

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Great one. There is no other author for whom I can say that I read every novel he ever wrote.

John Brodey

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I live on Long Island and often drive upstate. When I can’t stand the traffic on the Cross Bronx or the Bruckner I take the service road. I call it my "Bonfires" shortcut. Nobody ever knows what I am talking about but it always makes me smile. RIP Tom Wolfe.

Regards,

David M. Ehrlich

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He broke open writing. For me he did. I remember staring at the pages. I didn't realize how many rules there were until I saw them all smashed. English class went from most hated to "yeah, let's write stuff!"

Michael Alex

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I love Tom Wolfe. The man is brilliant. You should read "Man In Full" or "I Am Charlotte Simmons" if you haven't yet.

Charlie Soste

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Bob - Wonderful tribute to a great writer. Thanks for your perspective and for the reminders about real writing and the importance of being true to yourself.

Burke Long

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Bob---I got that book to read "The First Tycoon of Teen": Phil Spector on the plane, Phil on David Susskind, Phil in the office railing against his network of regional distributors. An endearing portrait of a highly influential impresario who had been operating mostly in the shadows. Paul Lanning

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phil spector attempted to live the life that tom wolfe had given him - and that was the beginning of the end.

(name withheld by me)

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This is the best eulogy I’ve read on Tom Wolfe.

Thanks!

Josh Patrick

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