Not to be confused with the Depression-era novelist Thomas Wolfe, the journalist Tom came to prominence in the final years of the New York Herald Tribune, my favorite newspaper ever.
With its clean, classic design, smart writing and editing, and sometimes playfully tabloid headlines, it was a standout in a very competitive newspaper market but looking for one more edge to assure its survival.
Voila, Wolfe emerged with his hyper, supercharged, Pop art zeitgeist, in-your-face, “Look at this!” writer for the paper’s Sunday magazine (which would continue on its own as New York magazine after the newspaper itself ceased publication). He even moved up to the daily paper itself as a columnist, alongside Jimmy Breslin.
Quite simply, he was fun to read.
Maybe it was a reflection of his Manhattan success or the counterculture themes he picked up on, but Wolfe created a marketable visual image as a dandy in a white, often three-piece, suit, with oversized glasses. He was about getting attention for himself, counter to the usual advice to reporters to make themselves invisible so they could more objectively view the events unfolding before them.
Not so, Tom. Or, in my case, with the college prof who thought I’d be the next Tom Wolfe.
His Electric-Acid Kool-Aid Test, following Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as avatars of LSD, became a bestselling sensation leading memorably to the Right Stuff about astronauts.
Apart from this writing style, he knew how to sniff out a trend. In contrast, I ultimately went counter-trend.
I do wonder how much he influenced me. Perhaps in Subway Visions.
As for others, Hunter Thompson seems to have most closely built on the legacy.
By the way, the novelist Wolfe was notorious for excess writing, too, though of a masterly sort.
As for the Herald Trib, you can get a taste of it in my post “Establishing my creds” of September 11, 2014.
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