Tom Wolfe Essays

  • Courage is The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

    959 Words  | 2 Pages

    Courage is The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe Tom Wolfe's novel The Right Stuff, gives an accurate description into the lives of the first astronauts and rocket-powered aircraft test pilots, from their careers before, during, and after their selection to become astronauts, through to their private home lives. All throughout his book, Wolfe refers to "the right stuff" and "this righteous stuff" without ever saying upfront what "the stuff" really is. I have concluded that throughout the story, "the

  • Bonfire Of The Vanities By Tom Wolfe Summary

    1971 Words  | 4 Pages

    story Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe challenges many aspects of society and humanity through the use of social dynamics and perceptions. A technique Wolfe uses is introducing controversial themes that test characters in physical and social emotional ways. One of these controversial ideas is the Favor Bank. This idea is extremely important in the story because of its effect on the interactions, reactions and outcomes of the characters across the plotline. . Wolfe uses the Favor Bank as a connection

  • New Journalism

    2294 Words  | 5 Pages

    political landscape were also reshaping journalism. Journalistic trailblazers, including Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion were the known figures that shaped new journalism. Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr., known as Tom Wolfe, was born in 1931 in Richmond Virginia. He received his educations from Washington and Lee and Yale Universities. Wolfe started as a reporter for the Springfield Massachusetts Union, which began a ten-year newspaper career. As a correspondent

  • A Comparative Analysis of Armies of the Night and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in Regards to New Journalism

    2194 Words  | 5 Pages

    Taken at face value, Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test may seem very similar. They are both centered on a major author of the 1960s and his experiencing of historical events of the time, while set in the style of New Journalism. When examined closer, though, it becomes apparent that these novels represent two very different sides of New Journalism – Armies of the Night an autobiography with personal and political motivations, The Electric Kool-Aid

  • Bonfire Of The Vanities and “The Wolf On Wall Street”

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    which then became the movie. Although the movie was not directly based on Tom Wolfe 1987 classic The Bonfire Of The Vanities, it does share several similarities, as well as differences, to the memoir. Without understanding the history of the two stories, it is not very clear how they seem to all intertwine so easily. The Bonfire Of The Vanities was, in fact, written by Tom Wolfe in 1987, and is written as a message from Tom to the audience to show his interpretation of New York in the 1980’s. The

  • Parallels Between the Life of Ken Kesey and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

    897 Words  | 2 Pages

    narrator. Ken Kesey and the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden, both experienced hallucinations in their life. Kesey was an important figure in American counter-culture and experimented heavily with LSD and other hallucinogens (Wolfe). “He admitted that he wrote the novel while working as a night attendant at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, and that he wrote part of it while under the influence of drugs” (Reilly). It is evident that the time he spent working as an orderly impacted

  • McLuhan

    1487 Words  | 3 Pages

    McLuhan Author and social theorist Tom Wolfe once commented on Canadian professor Marshal McLuhan’s mantra, “the medium is the message” saying: The new technologies…radically alter the entire way people use their five senses, the way they react to things, and therefore, their entire lives and the entire society. It doesn’t matter what the content of a medium like t.v. is… 20 hours a day of sadistic cowboys caving in peoples teeth or… Pablo Casals droning away on his cello. How is it that violence

  • Broadcasting Industry Employment Rate

    1038 Words  | 3 Pages

    Unemployment Rate| Poynter." Poynter. N.p., n.d. Web. Feb.-Mar. 2014. "Summary." U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d. Web. Feb.-Mar. 2014. Willis, Jim. Journalism: State of the Art. New York: Praeger, 1990. Print. Wolfe, Tom, and E. W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Print.

  • American Heros in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff

    997 Words  | 2 Pages

    American Heros in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff depicts the lives of some of America's hottest pilots and its first astronauts. These men include Pete Conrad, Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Shirra, Alan Shepard, Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter and Deke Sleyton. Some of these men were hotshot test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base, and some flew cargo planes. Some had impeccable service records, while others hadn't flown in a real dog fight for even a second

  • Acid Test

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kool-Aid Acid Test 2) Author: Tom Wolfe 3) The grounds on which Thomas Wolfe created this documentation of the Merry Pranksters is that he attempts to re-create both the mental and physical atmosphere of their adventure and exploration across America. 4) Specific evidence in supporting the aforementioned thesis can be found in the “Author’s Note” section of the book but also in the writing style used to develop this masterpiece. Writing in a basic journal style, Wolfe documented the extraordinary

  • Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

    2014 Words  | 5 Pages

    other writers first experimented with psychedelic drugs.  After living at Perry Lane for a while, Kesey's friend, Vik Lovell, informed him about experiments at a local V.A. hospital in which volunteers were paid to take mind-altering drugs (Wolfe 321). Kesey's experiences at the hospital were his first step towards writing Cuckoo's Nest.  Upon testing the effects of the then little-known drug, LSD, "...he was in a realm of consciousness he had never dreamed of before and it was not a

  • Tom Wolfe’s: O Rotten Gotham

    1150 Words  | 3 Pages

    Tom Wolfe’s: O Rotten Gotham “It got to be easy to look at New Yorkers as animals, especially looking down from some place like a balcony at Grand Central at the rush hour Friday afternoon.” (Tom Wolfe). “O Rotten Gotham” argues that New Yorkers are in a state of behavioral sink. It would not be long before a “population collapse” or a “massive die off”. Throughout the article, Wolfe made his opinion clear. He believes everything New Yorkers go through is unhealthy and inhumane. Humans

  • Artwork is Not Art Because of Theory

    3376 Words  | 7 Pages

    became known as the painted Word, behind Modern art between 1945 and 1975. Probably the clearest and easiest to understand explanation of these theories and how they progressed through Modern Art history has been written by Tom Wolfe in a book cleverly titled The Painted Word. Wolfe has written several other books including From Bauhaus to Our House and The Bonfire of the Vanities. Within the pages of The Painted Word one finds a brilliant explanation of Modern Art and the theories it is based upon as

  • How Far Does Behavioral Sink Go?

    1119 Words  | 3 Pages

    become subject to this mysterious term, in once sense or another. Behavioral Sink, as described by the author, Tom Wolfe in the excerpt “O Rotten Gotham” from “A Forest of Voices”, is the study of how animals relate to their environment. In one of Wolfe’s studies he speaks of this behavioral sink in New York City. He talks about how overcrowding causes this. As observed by Wolfe, New Yorkers tended to be more aggressive and cold towards one another. When driving they were found to be screaming

  • The Nature of the Law of Nature

    1784 Words  | 4 Pages

    definitely influenced by the environment. Let us first address the issue of the impact of the environment on a person’s moral development. In Bonfire of the Vanities, author Tom Wolfe quotes physiologist José Delgado, saying that “each person is a transitory composite of materials borrowed from the environment” (Wolfe 512). This concept is significant because it demonstrates that people take from the environment certain aspects which eventually come to mold their characters. The idea of a composite

  • I Had to Fight to Read

    672 Words  | 2 Pages

    Proust, as I marveled at his privileged people and their luminous lives. Who were they really, I wondered, and was all of Paris like this, and if so, how soon could I get there? For the next two weeks, I cut back and forth between that unlikely duo, Wolfe and Proust, sweating from July's heat and the emotional impact of Brother Ben's death (best read when one is fifteen), then cooling off with the soothingly elegant rituals of Monsieur Swann and company.

  • Peace of God

    919 Words  | 2 Pages

    Peace of God The “Peace of God” encompasses a wide array of definitions. “Peace of God” is a gift from God. It is simpler than the peace that we may think. For example, I picked a sample of three gentlemen in my fraternity and asked them what is their first thought that arises with the phrase “Peace of God.” The responses in order was: . A society without wars . A God that condemns wars . A union of all religions. As interesting as their responses are, my research has found that the

  • Suicide in Bartleby and Life in the Iron Mills

    2668 Words  | 6 Pages

    centered on characters who are alienated laborers, looking for means through which they cannot be deprived of their humanity. Hugh Wolfe and Bartleby are both workers who have been victimized by the capitalistic system. As Karl Marx explains, the capitalistic system exploits the laborer and thus robs the laborer of his humanity through alienating the laborer. Both Wolfe and Bartleby become victims of the system, for they are not only alienated and dehumanized. But in their struggle against the system

  • Comparing Character in Child by Tiger and Most Dangerous Game

    630 Words  | 2 Pages

    had come upon a village, for there were many lights" (11). Today, it would be ludicrous for a man to own an island all by himself. Conversely, Dick Prosser lives more realistically. He lives in a basement room of a home belonging to a white family. Wolfe explains, "The bare board floor was always cleanly swept, a plain bare ...

  • Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins

    1280 Words  | 3 Pages

    history of American literature. Perkins served as editor for such well-acclaimed authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Ezra Pound, Ring Lardner, James Jones and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Through his advocacy of these modernist writers, he played an important role in the success of that movement. Perkins association with Thomas Wolfe is perhaps his most famous, but his relationships with Fitzgerald and Hemingway are equally note-worthy. He was, at different times, their