Tom Wolfe presents a lecture titled, What's Southern Today?
He argues that Southern Americans have a much more common-sense approach to life than other Americans. He recounted his experiences growing up in Richmond, Virginia and described what he has observed traveling through the Southern states. Mr. Wolfe also talks about the influence the region has had on his writing. After his presentation he answers audience members' questions. Tom Wolfe's books include: The Right Stuff, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and The Bonfire of the Vanities. His latest book is I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Bio
Tom Wolfe
Dr. Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe is an American author and journalist, best known as one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Wolfe graduated from St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Virginia before attending Washington and Lee University as an undergraduate. He then went on to graduate from Yale University with a Ph.D. in American Studies.
Tom Wolfe is the author of many books including I Am Charlotte Simmons, Hooking Up, A Man in Full, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Purple Decades, From Bauhaus to Our House, In Our Time, The Right Stuff, Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, The Painted Word, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Pump House Gang and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.
(born March 2, 1930, Richmond, Va., U.S.) U.S. journalist and novelist. He earned a doctorate from Yale University and then wrote for newspapers and worked as a magazine editor, becoming known as a proponent of New Journalism, the application of fiction-writing techniques to journalism. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) chronicles the life of a traveling group of hippies. The Right Stuff (1979; film, 1983) examines the first U.S. astronaut program. Other controversial nonfiction books attacked fashionable 1960s leftism, modern abstract art, and international architectural styles. His novel The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987; film, 1990), a novel of urban greed and corruption, was a best seller. Wolfe's later works include the novels A Man in Full (1998) and I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004).
The only book I've read of Wolfe's is Acid Test, as a sophomore in college. I've always found it amazing that dapper, distinguished Tom Wolfe could have tagged around with Kesey and the acid-heads for a single afternoon, let alone long enough to write an entire book about them. HST with the Hell's Angels? Sure. But Wolfe with the Pranksters? Whaa...?