This person died in 2018 at age 88. When he graduated college in 1951 he had enough skill as a baseball player to earn a tryout with the Giants. He earned his PhD in American Studies from Yale in 1957. Beginning in the 1960s he helped create the enormously influential hybrid of fiction techniques into non-fiction known as New Journalism. He was instantly recognizable as he strolled down Madison Avenue — a tall, slender, blue-eyed, boyish-looking man in his spotless three-piece white bespoke suit. He authored “The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test”, “The Right Stuff”, and “Bonfire of the Vanities”. Today’s dead celebrity is Tom Wolfe

Famous & Gravy is created and co-hosted by Amit Kapoor and Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss. Visit our website at famousandgravy.com and also enjoy our free mobile quiz game at deadoraliveapp.com

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode 41 “Viva Bojangles” (Jerry Jeff Walker) and Episode 23 “Book Rancher” (Larry McMurtry)

LINKS:

Transcript of this episode

New York Times Obituary for Tom Wolfe

Article by Michael Lewis on Tom Wolfe in Vanity Fair

“The Making of Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic” in Vulture

Trailer for ‘The Right Stuff’ movie

Trailer for ‘The ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ movie

Tom Wolfe’s guest appearance on The Simpsons

Dead or Alive quiz game

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Famous & Gravy official website

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Electric Vanities (Tom Wolfe)

Famous and Gravy: Dead celebrity biographies

Electric Vanities (Tom Wolfe)