R.I.P.

Writer Tom Wolfe Dies at 88

His colorful language ushered in the era of “New Journalism” in the 1960s.

Tom Wolfe—the journalist and author of many celebrated works, including The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Right Stuff, and Bonfire of the Vanities, died Monday at age 88. His masterful use of colorful language and “novelistic techniques” in his nonfiction work ushered in the era of “New Journalism” in the 1960s. Wolfe wrote on California counterculture and LSD, the first American astronauts, and the culture of money and greed in 1980s New York. He also wrote essays for New York, Harper’s, and Esquire—believing that journalism had effectively removed the novel as “American literature’s main event.” Wolfe died in a Manhattan hospital.