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A revealing portrait of the cultural giant who transformed American letters.
But what was he really like?
That’s the question Tom Wolfe—chronicler of American life through legendary works like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full—wanted biographers to answer. In this buoyant book-length study of the man, Joe Mysak, who first met Wolfe in 1977, obliges.
Mysak shows us a Wolfe who was an assassin on the page yet prized politeness and manners. A Wolfe who was a caustic critic of the culturati yet was wildly ambitious and obsessed with status. A Wolfe whose stylistic innovations disrupted an entire era of American literature yet was accused of being a reactionary by many of his peers.
Drawing from the 236 boxes of Wolfe material in the New York Public Library, interviews with dozens of family members, friends, and acquaintances, and his personal relationship with his subject, Mysak skillfully traces Wolfe’s eventful life. From his youth in Richmond, Virginia, to his hitherto unknown years in graduate school at Yale, to his newspaper apprenticeship, to his takeover of the magazine world, to his popular success as a historian and novelist, Mysak gives us a portrait of Wolfe that is as revealing as it is recognizable.
Introduction
Chapter 1: We Meet
Chapter 2: Richmond
Chapter 3: Education
Chapter 4: Education II
Chapter 5: Play Ball!
Chapter 6: Back There
Chapter 7: Yale
Chapter 8: Cache of Letters
Chapter 9: Cup of Coffee
Chapter 10: Capitol Steps
Chapter 11: Golden Age
Chapter 12: Magazine Writing
Chapter 13: Clay
Chapter 14: Ghosting
Chapter 15: The New Yorker
Chapter 16: The New Journalism
Chapter 17: Author
Chapter 18: Critic
Chapter 19: Reporting
Chapter 20: Fan Mail
Chapter 21: On the Road
Chapter 22: New York, the Magazine
Chapter 23: Sidebar
Chapter 24: Welcome to the Tom Wolfe Show
Chapter 25: That Party at Lenny’s
Chapter 26: Vietnam
Chapter 27: Historian
Chapter 28: The Missing Footnote
Chapter 29: The Right Stuff
Chapter 30: Right This Way
Chapter 31: Essayist
Chapter 32: Majoring in Journalism
Chapter 33: Status Drama
Chapter 34: Good Advice
Chapter 35: Tom’s Big ’80s
Chapter 36: The Hit
Chapter 37: Close Call
Chapter 38: Bonfire
Chapter 39: Bonfire Explodes
Chapter 40: Money (That’s What I Want)
Chapter 41: But What Was He Really Like?
Chapter 42: Dear Joe
Chapter 43: How to Write (Fiction)
Chapter 44: Meanwhile
Chapter 45: Real Estate Porn
Chapter 46: IN EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS
Chapter 47: Second Chance
Chapter 48: Broadcast News
Chapter 49: A Man in Full
Chapter 50: Three Stooges
Chapter 51: Higher Education
Chapter 52: The End
Chapter 53: School of Wolfe
Epilogue: The Novel
Appendix A: The Uncollected Wolfe
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index