NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tom Wolfe, author of the critically acclaimed works The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff,
will speak at Vanderbilt University on Monday, April 4, at 7:30 p.m. in
Langford Auditorium. Tickets for the event are free for Vanderbilt
students, faculty and staff. Tickets are $10 for the general public and
are available through TicketMaster.
Wolfe is considered the father of “New Journalism,” a type of
non-fiction writing that incorporates fictional or dramatic elements
into the reporting. New Journalism was born with Wolfe‘s “The
Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby,” an essay about hot rod
culture, in 1965. It was followed by The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
in 1967, in which Wolfe chronicled the bus trip taken by author Ken
Kesey and his Merry Pranksters as they presided over LSD-induced “acid
tests” across the country. Hunter S. Thompson and George Plimpton,
among others, became practitioners of the New Journalism style.
In 1979, Wolfe won the American Book Award for general non-fiction for The Right Stuff, a chronicle of the early days of the American space program. The book was later adapted into a hit film.
Wolfe‘s novels have furthered his reputation as one of America‘s pre-eminent social commentators. His best-seller The Bonfire of the Vanities explored the class structure and politics of New York City and the economic excesses of the 1980s. His 1998 novel A Man in Full delved into the economic and class structures of present day Atlanta and was nominated for the National Book Award.
Wolfe‘s latest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons,
was published in November and details the initiation of a female
college freshman into the fierce social atmosphere of a fictional
university. It has been called “a scathing assessment of our nation‘s
higher education.” Newsweek says of the author, “No writer — reporter or novelist — is getting our world on paper better than Tom Wolfe.”
Wolfe‘s lecture is being sponsored by the student-run Vanderbilt Speakers Committee.
Media contact: Kara Furlong, (615) 322-2706
kara.c.furlong@vanderbilt.edu